By Tanya Robbins

January 11^th, 1998
In the small town of New Boston, New Hampshire, it has been snowing for eight straight days. This is the type of town that can shut down because of the brute force of a snow storm, and if it rains too much, the Piscataquog River over steps its banks and roads begin to erode away. Sometimes when the weather causes the town to shut down, it appears to be a ghost town. It has been snowing non stop for 192 hours and each minute that passes is blurred by the white.

New Boston Central School has been shut down, not only because there’s no power, but because the school buses haven’t been able to travel down the long, twisted dirt roads to pick up the children.

In this town, there is one small general store called Dodge’s. It’s a typical general store with drinks and candy and other small house hold items, but now, most of the shelves are bare. There are no more jugs of water or loaves of bread, or batteries. The shelves look lonely and old with nothing on them. The store is still open so the workers who have spent countless hours plowing the slushy streets can get their coffee to stay awake.

The fire trucks from the volunteer fire department are all inside the garage, sleeping, waiting to be woken up and rev to life again. The ambulance, XI is out on a call, some sort of car accident involving black ice and the Piscataquog River. XII, the standby ambulance that’s usually kept at the Air Force Tracking Station on Joe English Hill, is sitting in the drive way of the fire station, running, waiting to once again be called into action.

The Town Hall is closed. There are no cars in the parking lot, but the plows still push aside the snow. Anyone would be crazy to go out in these conditions. Their complaints and car registrations can wait for another day.

The Community Church, which is directly to the right of the fire station and across the street from Dodge’s, is still holding their services on Sunday, but junior choir is cancelled. There’s one lone car in the parking lot buried underneath the snow. It was abandoned as soon as the snow started.

The Whipple Free Library, named after William Whipple the Revolutionary War hero, is also closed. The white, one floor building looks like it’s missing, thanks to the fresh coat of paint, it blends in with the whiteness of the snow. There are no books in the book drops. Instead, people are at home enjoying their books for an extra week or so. They’re not getting nagging phone calls from the evening librarians asking them to please return their book. It’s the only copy and the reserve list is ten people long.

The one blinking traffic light at the corner of River Road and Meeting House Hill is blinking red instead of its usual yellow. You can see skid marks from cars that tried to come to a halt too quickly already beginning to disappear under a fresh layer of snow.

You can see the thick slabs of ice crashing against the rocks in the river, creating ice jams. If you stand on the bridge in between the Apple Barn and the bank, you can see the icy, green water. You can tell it’s cold by the look of it, or maybe just from the frigid arctic smell that’s in the air.

Helena Drive is a small ‘dead end’ road that begins in New Boston and ends in Weare. It connects the two towns through an almost impassable rocky path, which is now covered in snow. The tree limbs are severely bent under the heavy wetness of the fresh snow. They stretch across the road in arcs, creating a tunnel of white. They block out all of the sun light there are so many of them. When the sun does manage to penetrate the cover of trees, the icicles sparkle radiantly and so does the rest of the snowy hill.

If a car travels down this road now, the roof would be scraped by these branches. A car probably couldn’t get up or down this road right now if it tried, even with 4-wheel drive. The pot holes would trap the tires and send them spinning violently, snow and dirt flying everywhere. Maybe if you had chains on your tires you could gain at least a little bit of traction.

You can barely notice the thirty foot embankment on the other side of the road the snow has become so deep. It has blanketed the ground and built its way up like a white, fluffy pile of pillows. There are no guard rails on this road, although some people think there should be. This is non town maintained, meaning the residents of the road have to plow and grate it themselves.

Gary Robbins, who lives at 76 Helena Drive, the last house before the trail becomes impassable, is always the first one out on his shiny black tractor to plow. The people who live at 60 don’t do a damn thing. Jug, who lives at 40, does what he can. He works for the Union Leader newspaper late at night. Usually he and Gary take turns plowing.

Gary is now out on his tractor, with two layers of flannel coats on, one padded, the other just simple cotton. He has his hat pulled down just above his eyes with the two ear flaps securely fastened under his chin. His tough, calloused hands are covered with thick, brown insulated workers gloves. His black Michelin boots house his wool socked feet and under his flannel lined blue jeans, he is wearing long johns. He is sitting on the single, springy seat of his tractor with the front plow pushing the snow down the embankment and off of the road. He keeps brushing the accumulating snow off his shoulders and the top of his hat. There are icicles stuck to his tiny, brown mustache. His nose is running and bright red just like his cheeks. He’s been out on the road for two hours straight and still can’t keep up with the snow.

Back at his house, his ten year old daughter and wife are playing Go Fish at the kitchen table to the light of a kerosene lamp. They’ve emptied the fridge and most of the freezer, sticking everything that needs to stay cold in the snow. There is a jug of milk sticking out, and random packages of meat. The snow is so high that it has started coming into the covered porch through the screen windows. The wood stove is holding a roaring fire with orange and blue flames that eat the wood and newspaper being fed to it.

Gary’s daughter keeps complaining that she wants to go play, and that she’s bored, but there’s nothing her mom can do. She doesn’t have any homework because the school is closed and she can’t go play outside with her neighbor because they’d both get lost in the snow. She can’t even sleep in her waterbed because the electricity is out and the liquid in the bed is too cold.

Everything in the town of New Boston is frozen and white. It looks like a winter wonderland taken out of a book.

Gary’s daughter has never seen a snow storm like this. She sits on the couch looking out the big window, watching the snow accumulate on the window sill. She wants to go sledding or ice skating downtown, like she usually does when it snows, but it’s getting dark, and it’s too dangerous outside. Her mom keeps going outside and shoveling around their cars, so when they finally are able to leave, they don’t have to remove mounds of snow from the roofs.

There is absolutely nothing for Gary’s family to do while the snow storm swirls around them. All they can do is sit and wait for the snow to stop and for the sun to begin to melt it. The entire town of New Boston lies under a blanket of freshly fallen snow, waiting for it to stop so they can emerge into the world again.