Scenes from this Side of the Bridge: Trick or Treat

“This has got to be one of the strangest years for weather that I can remember. I’ve lived here for a long time too.” – Overheard at in Fort Lee – February 2011 during Ice/Snow Storm.

“I don’t know that we’ve ever had an earthquake around here before.” – Overheard at in Fort Lee – August 2011

“Can you believe there was a hurricane and an earthquake in the same week here?” – Irene Kim, Fort Lee resident - August 2011

“Man! Snow in October is really weird. Someone told me this hasn’t happened since 1952.” – Susan Yi, Fort Lee resident - October 2011

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Saturday morning, as the first few snowflakes started to land here in Fort Lee, I was driving home from a tutoring appointment. I cruised down the Palisades Interstate Parkway listening to National Public Radio. At each break in the radio show, the announcer updated listeners on the unseasonably cold weather. A couple of times, he mentioned that there was expected to be less than an inch of accumulation.

It doesn’t seem like a big deal. I’ll bet this won’t even last until the afternoon. We might as well enjoy the stuff, I thought, as the flakes hit my windshield. I would be attending a Halloween costume party later that evening and hadn’t had a chance to shop for a costume yet. I sorted through the options in my head as the snow continued. The group of cars in front of me was slowing down now, but only slightly. Instead of driving twenty miles over the speed limit, they were now driving ten to fifteen miles per hour over the limit.  

If the snow keeps falling, maybe I won’t need a costume, I thought. I’ll just wear a snow pants to the party and say I’m dressed as a Minnesotan. I smiled to myself at the ridiculous idea. The snow would not be around that long. If it was, children would be trick or treating in snow gear on Monday, and I was pretty sure all of the little princesses would be less than happy to cover their puffy dresses with coats. I decided to make a stop at Halloween City later that day to pick something out for the party. But first, I would head back to my apartment for a bit before going to watch some friends who were playing in a flag football tournament that afternoon.

As I exited the parkway, I pulled into the Lukoil gas station on Fletcher Avenue. The attendant came over to my window.

“It’s pretty cold today, huh?” I asked after handing him my credit card.

He shook his head and folded his arms, rubbing his sleeves.

“It’s crazy, man; too cold. Talk about trick or treat. This is a real trick,” he said before turning away to start filling my car with gas.

The snow was coming down a little harder now and the gas station suddenly got busier. Perhaps all the worry warts were filling their gas tanks because they were afraid that the gas stations would lose power later that day. That was ridiculous. No one would lose power from less than an inch of snow.

“Dude, look at this snow,” I heard someone in the next car over say to their passenger. “Pretty strange, right?”

When I reached home not long afterward, I saw a text message from one of the flag football coaches.

“Games are now cancelled. Go home and stay warm,” it read. 

I looked out of my apartment window at the usually green soccer field behind our building. It was completely white with snow. Traffic on Lemoine Avenue now seemed to be a little quieter and slower.

I sat down at my computer and started working on a project. Less than ten minutes later, my phone buzzed and beeped with a text message from my wife: “Did you see on the evite that Tina’s Halloween party tonight got cancelled because of the weather?”

This weather was strange, I thought. It was certainly not normal. I suddenly had no plans for the afternoon or evening.

That evening, my wife and I bravely drove around fallen branches and through the snow to pick up her friend so that we could have dinner together. The twenty eight story apartment building she lives in was completely dark. In fact, the entire neighborhood near Route 46 seemed to have lost power.

“Well, at least the snow got me off work early. River Side Square Mall lost power. So I got to come home before I usually do,” Irene said as she climbed into our car. We drove slowly to , talking the entire way about how strange it was to have snow before Halloween.

As we walked in the door of the restaurant, we passed a group of people leaving.

“I think the weather is out to get us this year,” one of them said loudly. “It’s been one thing after another all year.”

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It seems every year of the past five or six that I’ve lived in Bergen County, I’ve heard people comment on how the weather we are experiencing at the moment is an anomaly.

“Yeah, the weather’s just been weird this year. This doesn’t usually happen,” they might say. “I can’t remember when we’ve had a storm like this,” another person might add.  

I’ve also heard: “This is Jersey. You never know.”

I am constantly surprised by the seemingly out of season weather we seem to experience. I know others out there are caught off guard as well. However, maybe it’s time for us to start getting used to the surprising weather conditions. In other words, while it might not be possible to view these occurrences as “treats,” given the number of times they happen in a year, perhaps we shouldn’t think of them as surprising “tricks” either.