Jeanine Shimer recalled taking her daughter Ruby, then 5, for a ride over the snow in 20011 after a storm heaped 21-inches of snow on the area.
On Feb. 2, they were back at it, taking advantage of another major snow fall.
Only this time, Jeanine noticed a difference as she tried to tug Ruby in her yellow saucer sled over snow banks on the west side of Sheridan Road.
“She’s heavier,” she said.
The two had ridden a shuttle bus to Jeanine’s office at Northwestern University and were ambitiously seeking to make the return trip on foot to their home in the Main Street area.
Other residents were digging out or just staying indoors a day after a storm dumped 20-inches of snow on Evanston, the fifth highest in Chicago weather history, according to the National Weather Service.
City officials declared a snow route parking ban for primary streets Feb. 1, and followed that by putting into effect snow emergency parking rules for Feb. 2 and 3, keeping the option of extending the ban further based on how the cleanup goes.
“Today’s snow emergency will allow for more efficient curb-to-curb plowing in residential areas,” said James Maiworm, the city’s assistant public works superintendent in an e-mail Monday morning. “The majority of Evanston crews will be working residential streets with the objective of cleared curb-to-curb streets.”
Business district cleanups have started, he said, and will continue each night this week until all the parking surfaces and meters are opened up, said Maiworm.
Recycling and solid waste pickups will occur but, because of the volume of snow, will probably see some delays, said Maiworm, who couldn’t be reached later for follow up comment.
On the 1700 block of Lake Street, just east of the high school, Samson Campbell, Jr., made considerable headway Monday afternoon, clearing snow from his vehicle.
Speaking of weather history, Campbell has lived it.
He was driving a truck at the time of the record-breaking 1967 storm, hauling bomb bases to a factory to have them plated during the Viet Nam era.
“It worked out real good,” he recalled. “My truck was loaded. I couldn’t get to the dock. My dispatcher said ‘if you can make it home, take the truck home.’ I was able to drive all the way into Evanston over on Ashland where I was living, with those bomb bases,” he said. “Once they got there they stuck there for about a week and a half.
“I saw all these people walking, in the middle of the street,” he remembered. “And then I said ‘I wonder what’s going on. Then I looked over to my right side and there’s a CTA bus driver walking,” he said.
That drove home the enormity of the storm. “I said, are they [riders] going to be disappointed. They’re waiting for a bus and here comes the driver walking.”
Campbell took this year’s storm more in stride.
“I had a lot of activity I had to do Sunday. I got a call that said it’s all canceled and I just went and made myself a nice cup of coffee, put on the stereo and listened to music.”
Twitter: | @evanstonscribe
