“All people must remain in their homes.”
– Gov. Michael Dukakis during the Blizzard of ‘78
“We really worry about people being outside.”
– Gov. Maura Healey last Friday
Gee, storm politics sure have changed in the past 48 years.
Dukakis could be more insistent back then because he didn’t have to deal with the lesson of the COVID pandemic – that if you caution people not to place their hands on a red-hot stove, a substantial number of them will do so anyway and denounce you for warning them. And he was blessed to serve in the days before the oxymoronically named “smart” phone, through which some of us will be persuaded it’s OK to venture out at the height of the storm because the whole thing is a false flag.
But some things haven’t changed. Most notably, allegedly hardy New Englanders still mob the supermarkets ahead of any forecast storm, gouging the eyes out of anyone even thinking about cutting in front of them for that last jug of milk.
For a piece on the old Channel 56 news we once staked out the milk section of a local market on the eve of a big snowfall and asked a woman wedging eight gallons into her cart if she had a big family to keep milked up.
“No,” she said. “It’s just me and my husband.”
Do you two fancy a milk bath together?
“No, it’s just something I always do when it’s going to snow.”
Why?
“Maybe because….snow is white, and milk is white too?”
We always wondered if she also binge-shopped for chocolate milk during a blackout.
Another thing that hasn’t changed is how big storms can pose political peril for pols who don’t handle them properly. Chicago Mayor Michael Bilandic got bounced in 1979 after the city bungled a post-blizzard cleanup. (Lowlight: ordering people to move their cars into school parking lots or face ticketing, but failing to plow the school lots.) President George W. Bush’s second-term approval rating suffered permanent damage when the feds botched their response to Hurricane Katrina, with the photo of Bush peering down on the carnage from a window of Air Force One an instant self-immolation classic.
And closer to home, Gov. Deval Patrick’s run was bracketed with damaging weather-related fiascos. There was the poorly timed release of state workers ahead of a December 2007 storm that helped create epic gridlock, and the MBTA-disabling Snowpocalypse winter of 2015 that, while it occurred just after Patrick left office, reminded everyone what a flop his transit oversight had been.
Perhaps Healey’s handling of this storm won’t draw universal scrutiny. It’s not like the old days, before every movie ever made plus Mr. Ed reruns were available to the touch of a button. At deadline, she seemed to be doing fine, but you never know when an unexploded storm grenade will go off. Pro tips: make sure DCR plows its parkways flush to the curb, to avoid Tuesday traffic gridlock like Patrick’s 2007 nightmare, and tell Phil Eng to make shoveling out the bus stops priority number one.
And if you really want to make life more affordable, find some money in the budget for a milk buyback program.