One thing about Elkhorn, it's never too cold for things to get hot. All that snow this week has got some people boiling.
I'm not sure how anyone can get mad at anything in a winter wonderland. The snow didn't stop falling here from early Monday morning to late Tuesday afternoon. It was absolutely gorgeous.
That didn't stop some from complaining on Monday that the streets hadn't been scraped. The county trucks were hitting the main roads through town, but the city hadn't hit the backstreets.
Tuesday morning, several were in a panic. There was snow falling out of the sky and someone was letting it stay on their road. Clearly the city wasn't doing it's job, probably because it's broke.
I found this out when I drove from my house to double kwik. The people were correct. There was snow on the road. I drove on it to get to dk. I drove on it again to get home, including up my steep hill.
By Wednesday morning, still no one had scraped my street or any around me. I found this out by walking around the neighborhood, then driving to double kwik again and driving around several more city streets.
Unlike some people, I wasn't offended. Whatever the reason, I'm glad the city didn't scrape the streets. I am solidly on the leave the dang streets alone when it snows team.
Here's why. Elkhorn City has a half dozen or more epic sledding runs right in town on city streets. They stop being epic when someone decides to scrape them.
Winter snows were once celebrated with crowds of kids and adults sledding around town all day and late into the night. Hotel Hill, Suicide, Stillhouse, B&G Hill were just a few where dozens would gather every night there was a good snow. We used to have about 4 every winter.
Flexible Flyers were once as common in Elkhorn as ATVs are today. There were more high end steel runner sled courses around Elkhorn than you could go to in a day. Most were on pavement, but not all. The most thrilling run in town was down the spine of the graveyard hill, weaving between tombstones on either side of the narrow path.
Nobody runs that one anymore. A few graves were added to the path, so understandable.
But as far as I can tell, nobody sleds any of the old runs anymore. You probably can't find ten sleds in all of Elkhorn.
I'm not sure of all the reasons that is, but I'm sure one is because somebody got the bright idea to scrape off the best sledding hills any town could boast. Gradually people forgot about sledding with their kids and grandkids and neighbors on snowy winter nights.
And they started expecting their roads to be cleared when it snowed because who can be ready after only 4 or 5 days of snow forecasts. What if there was an emergency? What if they were snowed in for two days and needed cigarettes?
What if? Well what if you had a sled? That's what I'd like to find out.