Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 19, 1994 TAG: 9402190027
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
What a hassle.
Or maybe your pipes froze during the first ice storm, and you had to trudge over to your neighbor's house to stand in line for a shower.
Tough break. Sorry to hear it.
But if that's all the trouble that has befallen you during the winter of 1994, there are a few folks around here with little sympathy for you, frozen pipes or no.
They don't mean to belittle the hassles that the rest of Southwest Virginia has had to live through over the past months. But in the timeless game of disaster one-upmanship, these people, who all called this newspaper's Infoline with tales of their icecapades, truly have a right to claim the coveted "you-think- your-winter-was-bad" bragging rights.
Take Radford residents Trina Gross and Todd Sturgill, for instance. Actually, take their furniture, if you don't mind. It's fine; just a bit . . . scented, that's all.
After Gross and Sturgill's house lost water and electricity last week, the two moved out to stay with friends.
But the house didn't stay vacant for long, because a new family moved in. A skunk family.
"It was just completely terrible," said Sturgill, a manager at BT's Restaurant. "It smelled so bad it made your eyes burn."
Although the skunks took up residence in a crawl space underneath the house, Gross said the smell was as bad as if the critters had made themselves at home in the living room.
"All of our furniture reeks, and we lost all our groceries," said Gross, a graduate student at Radford University. "The cleaning bill for our clothes is going to be outrageous."
The two had to throw out sheets, towels and food, all of it unsalvageable. They opted to get rid of their furniture, too, rather than attempt a massive upholstery overhaul. And they've found another house, one that won't require them to shower after every visit.
Now that they have somewhere to live, things smell a bit sweeter.
"I can sort of laugh about it now," Sturgill said. "But anywhere I go, I'm afraid I smell like skunk."
"It is quite funny," Gross said. "Everybody's been calling me `Pepe Le Pew.' "
Although Gross and Sturgill take the prize in the smelly mammal disaster category, they weren't alone in their tale of winter woe.
Anyone trying to travel during or after either of the recent ice storms found his options limited, to say the least. Unless you were lucky enough to be a former Iditarod champion with a team of dogs in your garage, you were probably stuck at home or in an airport lounge.
Eight-year-old Allison Elswick of Vinton found out the hard way that even Mickey Mouse doesn't have much pull in the weather department. The third-grader, whose godparents had years ago promised Sheree Phillips of Roanoke, her husband and five of their seven kids were stranded for four hours on Interstate 95 in their minivan. Four hours, five kids. No bathroom. her a trip to Disney World for her eighth birthday, was supposed to fly to Orlando the day the last big storm started.
Needless to say, she never made it south, even after getting up at 3 a.m. the next day to try to catch a flight from Lynchburg when all Roanoke flights were canceled.
"She's handling it really rather maturely, for an 8-year-old," said her mother, Susan Elswick. The trip has been tentatively rescheduled for sometime this summer, when there shouldn't be any ice storms. Keep your fingers crossed, Allison.
Highway travel wasn't much better, according to Sheree Phillips of Roanoke. Phillips, her husband and five of their seven kids had driven to Pennsylvania to visit her mother-in-law. Although it was barely snowing when they started the trip back home, by the time they hit West Virginia the roads were impassable.
For four hours, the family was stranded on Interstate 95 in their minivan. Fortunately, they had food and sleeping bags with them. No bathroom, though. Imagine that with five kids.
They finally made it to a Days Inn in Morgantown, W.Va., their home for the next five days. The hotel, filled to the brim with stranded travelers, first started to run out of food. Then the hot water went. Then the kids got really, really bored.
"I will never go anywhere in the wintertime again," said Phillips, who finally did make it home, more or less in one piece.
Even the best-laid plans for foiling the winter storms weren't always enough to ensure happy endings.
Mike Preston of Salem thought he finally had found the perfect way to secure his 20-foot sailboat for the winter.
He didn't want a repeat of last winter, when the boat capsized in Smith Mountain Lake and took on 3,000 gallons of water during the big blizzard. So he decided to dry-dock it this winter. Live and learn, he thought.
Wouldn't you know it: This was the winter that one particular ice-covered pine tree decided to fall - right on that poor boat.
As of Thursday evening, Preston hadn't been able to get on the boat to survey the extent of the damage. But he said the tree was a big one, easily 40 feet tall with a diameter of 16 inches.
So what options are left for next winter, assuming the sailboat survives?
"I think I'm going to park it in the middle of a parking lot," Preston said.
by CNB