Jeremy Boswell scoured his house Tuesday morning for a slippery, snow-worthy vessel that would hold both him and his son, Aleister, who is almost 2.
Boswell couldn’t afford to buy a new sled, but his creativity and desire for a day of merriment with his son far outweighed his frozen assets.
The Everett dad decided to use Aleister’s plastic-covered baby mattress as a sled for the two. To make a sturdy sled strap, he punched holes in the mattress and laced a brown extension cord through it.
On their small, white mattress covered with a grid of pastel hearts, the two crept down the steep hill above the ballpark at Forest Park. Aleister’s chubby baby cheeks were crimson, his big eyes perpetually wide beneath his bright, hunter orange snowcap.
Their snow raft was by no means as sleek or as swift as the neon-colored plastic saucers and sleds whizzing by it. But father and son never stopped laughing long enough to notice.
"He’s having a blast," Boswell said, grinning at his son. Flakes of melting snow glistened in his long, rust-colored beard. "I’ll buy him a new mattress when I get paid."
Community Transit driver Merlin Yost, 52, of Arlington was on the road by 5 a.m. "It’s pretty tricky driving. You just slide. It’s like driving on ice," he said.
"I did have two snowballs thrown at me. One of them just missed me and hit the corner of the bus. I couldn’t get the bus stopped quickly enough. I would have had a snowball fight with them."
At the Edmonds ferry dock, ferries ran on time Tuesday morning but with only half of the normal traffic, said Wanda Wells, who sells ferry tickets. Instead of up to 60 cars usually headed to Kingston in the morning, one ferry only carried five, she said.
"We’ve even had people who’ve come over and decided to go right back after hearing about I-5," she said.
Danny Meeks opened the Granite Falls Hardware Store an hour early so residents could prepare for the storm. He said he planned on keeping the store open late, too.
His daughter, Ginger Olson, was busy at the counter helping customers. It was a busier-than-normal day. Snow boots, snow-melting products and snow shovels were big sellers.
"We sold out of sleds like in the first hour," she said.
Dale Duffield, 60, showed up for work at 6:30 a.m. sharp because employees of the Medical-Dental Building depend on him to shovel the snow and make sure the heating system is working well.
"I come in no matter what," Duffield said as he smoked his pipe outside the building’s doors and clutched a paper cup of coffee. "I’m retired Navy, and in the Navy you get things done no matter what. You can’t stay in port just because the wind’s blowing."
Stanwood School District middle school teacher Nate Christensen wishes the district would have canceled school.
Some teachers and parents shared his concern, and kept their kids home, he said. "I had colleagues in the ditch trying to get in to take care of half a classroom or less," Christensen said.
His district was one of three north Snohomish County school districts that did not cancel classes Tuesday.
Through snow and icy roads, Chuck Kern was there with the important delivery you were waiting for. Is he a postal carrier? A driver for Federal Express with an important document?
No, no. Chuck Kern was knocking on the door Tuesday with your "Meat Eater’s Wallop" from Alfy’s Pizza.
Filling in for stranded and stuck delivery drivers, Kerns, 22, took it all in stride. "I’m from Minnesota, so I’m right at home in this," he said.
And did he get good tips for trekking through the snow so customers didn’t have to? Kern chuckled and shook his head.
"No."
While every other scheduled City Council meeting in Snohomish County was canceled Tuesday night, the show went on in Mill Creek, where Mayor Terry Ryan planned to load up a City Council member or two in his all-wheel-drive Volvo station wagon.
"I think we have a great group of people, and we truly like each other, so this is kind of fun," Ryan said of the carpooling.
City Council meetings in Brier, Edmonds, Gold Bar and Snohomish were canceled because of weather and travel conditions.
Ryan said there was hardly any thought of canceling the meeting.
"That’s the way it ought to be," Ryan said. "We are good public servants."
For many, Tuesday’s storm provided an impromptu opportunity to rent some videos and cozy up at home.
"This has been the trend probably for the last week or so," said Kathy Brackett, a three-year employee at Video Factory on U.S. 2 in Monroe.
"In cold weather and with a forecast of snow, everybody comes in like wild animals and gets movies," she said.
New releases and video games have been flying off the shelves.
"We love the snow," she said. "We don’t want to be here, but we love it."
The phone at Vern Fonk Insurance in Everett wasn’t ringing off the hook yet, but agent Mardi Logan suspected it wouldn’t be long.
"We’ve had a few claims, fender benders, but not an over-abundance — not yet, anyway," she said. "By (today) we’ll probably have a bunch of phone calls."
Over at Sky Valley Towing, which has Snohomish County locations in Monroe, Snohomish, Mill Creek and Skykomish, some jobs were being turned down.
"We’re not going too far out of our area because of the fact that it’s bad out there," dispatcher Bob Emry said.
Daniel Huffman, a state administrative law judge, was scheduled to preside over four hearings Tuesday morning, but no one showed up for them. The hearings were appeals of state decisions to either cut off public assistance or deny applications for it.
The state sometimes refuses to reschedule a hearing if someone skips it, but "if someone can’t make it because of bad weather, it’s probably a good enough reason to reschedule," Huffman said. He left his Federal Way home at 5:15 a.m. Tuesday to make a two-hour trip to Everett — twice as long as usual.
Pediatric nurse Lisa Rush of Edmonds decided not to risk a trip to her job in West Seattle after her husband, Nathan, called from a bus headed south and told her about a dozen accidents he’d seen on I-5 Tuesday morning.
"I have a 12-year-old Honda. It barely has two-wheel drive," she said. "I just decided to get up and walk around and take pictures. I love snow."
She added, "At least it’s better than rain."
Reporters Victor Balta, Cathy Logg, Scott Morris, Yoshiaki Nohara David Olson and Katherine Schiffner contributed to this story. Reporter Jennifer Warnick: 425-339-3429 or jwarnick@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
