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Radio Free Montone: Brrrrr

By John Montone, 1010 WINS

I felt it Sunday morning for the first time in a long time and it made me shiver. In more ways than one.

Say so long to these 70-degree afternoons for they are leaving town. Greeting me when I opened the front door of our house near the bay on LBI was a sudden chill.  The wind tried to toss me back inside.  It was howling off the bay, reminding me that the 42-degree reading on my Accu-Weather I-Phone app was hardly the entire story.  I stubbornly wore shorts all day, but I wasn't fooling anyone.  We are getting deeper into football season.  The leaves are turning.  A few flakes have already fallen in far northern parts of the country.  And while I have often spoken in glorious metaphors  about the change of seasons, last winter wizened me.  It snowed too often.  It got too cold.  And stayed too cold for too long.

It is coming back now.  Too soon.  And I dread it.  Almost fear it.  I think back to January.  A Friday morning covering which storm was it?  Six inches?  Eleven?  I had started in Manhattan at 4 A.M. talking to cabbies about driving on icy, unplowed streets.  Interviewed a guy near Cadman Plaza trying to dig his car out of an ice bank.   Hit a neighborhood in Queens where cars were no longer visible under mountains of snow from the last three storms.  And finally on to the Bronx where I reported Live on 1010 WINS that I was driving blind.  The slush being kicked up by other vehicles had covered my windshield and I couldn't wash it off because the windshield washer spray nozzle…I didn't even know what it was called until last winter, but it was frozen.  The wash could not reach the windshield.  So how cold was it?  It was that cold.

I do not like to push the seasons.  It annoys me to see Halloween skeletons hanging in stores right after Labor Day.  Or Christmas lights the day after Halloween.  I like to feel a holiday before seeing it exploited for commercial purposes.  But I am feeling the big freeze.  That wind off the bay was a warning shot.  It taunted me with memories of sub-zero wind chills and my car door frozen.  My ears burning and my fingers numb as I carried my microphone through almost deserted streets.

Listen: Radio Free Montone

One morning in downtown Brooklyn it was snowing and maybe fifteen degrees.  I was looking for someone to interview, anyone.  But a sanitation crew blew me off, a livery driver would not open his window and the gentleman behind the counter of a deli told me to close the door then he shut his mouth.  Finally I spotted a fellow trudging up an unshoveled sidewalk.  I could barely make out his face beneath a ski mask and scarf.  "How about this weather?" I asked him.

To which he replied, "No mas. No mas."

Now I fear there will be mas.  Mucho mas.

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