So. I return to Boston from Christmas Day spent at my tow-year-old nephew's house in the cacophonous company of the hauntingly cadaverous Murray Wiggle and his antipodean friends, only to find the city in the icy, double-fisted clutches of a capricious winter blizzard. Beacon Street, in particular, I thought, stepping out of the airport cab I had managed to commandeer into curbside dunes of thick white flakes, could most defintely have provided the contents of a highly effective snow globe, myself with suitcase and duffle bag cast in the role of tiny plastic figure standing stationary forever outside the minature two-dimensional brownstones in this swirling souvenir of some tourist's inability to discover the location of TV's "Cheers" bar, having walked four blocks down the road in the wrong direction as they invariably do.
All through the remainder of the night - or so it seemed to travel weary people - Boston Public Works departments were out in force, ploughing the road with their huge urban tractors and scooping the unwanted snow up on to .... the sidewalks, which consequently become impassable by all except mountain goats, extremely experienced Himalayan guides, and the yeti, none of whom, at least as far as I am aware, live in Greater Boston area - definitely not in the Back Bay, at any rate.
I harbor a vague notion that had the Boston Public Works departments been deployed at Stalingrad, then the siege of that battle scarred city might never have resolved itself at such an early stage in the war, since I absolutely certain that even the T-34's and heavy artillery of the Soviets could not have pierced the densely packed walls of ice along the streets created by BPW's snow clearance methods:
"I bring terrible news Comrade General Chuikov, a division of Boston Public Works snow ploughs are ploughing the streets of Stalingrad!"
"Indeed this is most disastrous news, Ivan Ivanovitch, I begged them not to plough this year, for it means that the Red Army must postpone our encircling pincer movement until next spring ... perhaps even next summer, since I doubt that such huge untraversable piles of snow will not melt until July and the Germans can send reinforcements!"
"What shall we do Comrade General Chuikov?"
"Hand me my pistol, Ivan Ivanovitch, I am going to shoot myself. Send word to Stalin."
"I shall try Comrade General Chuikov, but I don't think the mail can get through now, at least not with the sidewalks in this condition.
"Oh woe are we, Ivan Ivanovitch. Boston Public Works are most certainly the enemy of the people if there ever was one!"
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