Snow Alerts Seen As A Challenge

It was a standard lineup at the Manito Park sledding hill Saturday morning a little after 9 o’clock.

A few kids. A couple of parents. And a frisky dog.

Anyone who drives up Grand has seen it a hundred times. It’s a classic Spokane winter scene.

A few blocks away, at a South Hill grocery store, another Spokane December tradition was being observed. A pair of checkers were making fun of how drivers over in Seattle are intimidated by snow and ice.

The implication of their remarks was clear: Road conditions that bring the West Side of Washington to its knees would not faze the Spokane area.

Hmmmm. Idle boast or accurate reporting?

On Sunday morning, a guy on the radio noted the piling-on Saturday night snowfall. He said authorities recommended staying off the roads. It seemed like the perfect occasion to head out and test the grocery checkers’ theory.

There weren’t a lot of people out at about 9:30. It was, after all, Sunday morning.

But the snowy roads were not deserted. Drivers in 4-wheel-drive rigs were out. Drivers in front-wheel drive compacts were out. Drivers with great winter tires or chains were out. And even some people in cars practically designed by Detroit specifically to get stuck in snow were out.

In a comparison of states, Washington ranks low in terms of the percentage of residents who are church-goers. But nobody can say drivers in that last group were not demonstrating an act of faith Sunday morning.

Arterials had been plowed. But on side streets, the only reliable way to make progress was to never lose momentum - even if that required adopting a casual attitude about certain rules of the road. And it helped to keep muttering “C’mon baby, c’mon baby …”

A fortyish guy outside a supermarket on 29th was asked what had possessed him to venture out on such a morning. “We needed some milk and bread,” he said, not even trying to suppress a satisfied smile.

He might as well have yanked open his coat to reveal a “No Fear” T-shirt. He could have theatrically pointed to the snow-clogged street, saying “Because it’s there.”

Now one could argue that’s not a particularly laudable attitude. You could even call it lunkheaded.

But for better or worse, those grocery clerks were right. A willingness to tackle some tough sledding is a part of living here.

, DataTimes MEMO: Being There is a weekly feature that looks at gatherings in the Inland Northwest.