The Gas Station Angel
I
In the early days of 2014, the winter storms in Michigan were so heavy with snow and frigid cold air they called them polar vortexes. Schools, businesses and many roads were closed. Most stores were running low on everything and gas stations were not receiving their shipments of gasoline. When Joe heard that there was not going to be a break in the weather any time soon he decided to get some gasoline in case the weather went on indefinitely and there was a shortage of Gas. He knew his excursion was surely going to be a harrowing trip. He would not have to go out if he had not ignored dire warnings of the weathermen. Their track record for accuracy was dismal so Joe mostly ignored any forecast.
Joe was an elementary school teacher and loved his job. He was 25 and single. He had had few girlfriends and did not feel the crushing need to pair up with someone or be alone as many of his friends had done. He was waiting for “The one” and he knew he would find her. There was no hurry and no anxiety. Let nature take its course.
He bundled up and headed out into the Vortex. The first step was to shovel a path to get to the driveway where he could see his car sitting in 18 inches of snow. He started in on the bailout and in 30 minutes had freed his car from the deep but light snow. As he started to shovel from the rear of the car to the road a city plow started down the small hill toward his driveway. Joe groaned as the plow threw a couple more inches of snow onto the end of driveway. Another 20 minutes and Joe thought the snow was cleared enough to get the car out of the driveway. He said a small prayer and backed out into street. The plow had just been through but there was an already noticea...
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...hael.
He dreamt. He was in the car again with Michael. Michael was saying “Joe you are a good man. You live by the laws and commandments of God. Well, at least as much as any mortal man can. You confess you sins and ask for forgiveness when you fall short. Your life is about to change. The world is about to change. You will be at the center of that change. I am here to prepare you for what has been foretold for thousands of years. God and the Holy Spirit have chosen you to a task that has only been asked of any man once in history. The world has been waiting for two millennium for the events about to take place. Some of the world’s most important questions are about to be answered. You must prepare for your role in this apocalyptic event.”
When he woke in the morning he realized he had had the same dream several times. He could quote Michael verbatim.
The story begins with the narrator being a man in his mid-thirties, with a stable job, and a normal life. The only thing missing in his life seems to be a female companion. He wants to find somebody he likes, understands and has something in common with, and he is sick of making the "acquaintance of a divorced computer programmer in her mid thirties with three kids and bad breath" (246) and her like.
In Kate Bolick’s article “All the Single Ladies” she writes about how women are beginning to climb higher as the men are falling behind. Also, how that when women are at a good point in their lives and are ready to find a man they are left with nothing, that most of them men are already taken and on with their lives; Or that the ones that are left are always the ones that they don’t end up wanting.
Nearly 100 Kansans froze to death during the storm. Neither were the settlers prepared to protect their livestock. Cattle turned their tails to the wind and "drifted" for miles across the open range until they dropped from hunger or exhaustion. Losses were high, up to 75% in some areas, and consequently some large western Kansas cattle companies were bankrupted. Business and rail traffic were paralyzed for weeks. The force of eleven Union Pacific locomotives was unable to "buck" through and cut in the snow near ...
So…There was this man named Phil who lived in South Carolina. He was a nice, simple man who worked hard as a farmer. Though he was doing well for himself, he felt lonely. You see, he had been divorced two times already, and he really wanted some companionship in his life.
An example of the cycle followed by her father, his father, and his father before him is told when Blunt recalls a major blizzard in December 1964 that trapped the family and some neighbors in their small homestead. She unemotionally describes how her father simply proceeded to go through the motions of keeping the pipes from freezing, calmly accepting the fact that he could do nothing as the storm progressed and he could not prevent loss of a of their livestock. Or how when he first ventured out to check on the animals in their nearby barn and nearly lost his way back in whiteout conditions. Later, when the storm passed, she told of playing amongst the frozen corpses of the cattle, jumping from ribcage to ribcage, daring her older brother and sister to cut off pieces of the animals, all with the calm acceptance that this was so normal, nothing strange about it.
Coventry Patmore believed his wife Emily was the perfect Victorian wife and wrote "The Angel in the House" about her. Though it did not receive much attention when it was first published in 1854, it became increasingly popular through the rest of the nineteenth century and continued to be influential into the twentieth century. The Little House series reflects what Patmore originally wrote and strongly believed. “The Angel in the House” theme is both introduced and intertwined throughout the series. It begins in The Little House in the Big Woods and continues to reveal itself throughout The Little House in the Prairie, thus giving to audience a view of nineteenth century culture.
In short, this is a story of a random meeting of two strangers, and an attraction or feeling that is overlooked and ignored. A man describes a lady such that you could only envision in your dreams, of stunning beauty and overwhelming confidence of which encounters of the opposite sex occur not so very often. The mans attraction is met by a possible interest by the lady, but only a couple flirtatious gestures are exchanged as the two cross paths for the first time and very possible the last.
On July 26, 2013, it was a warm summer day in Iowa, Arick Baker was just expecting to have a ordinary day on the farm with his father, however his day was anything but ordinary. Between 6:15 a.m. to 6:45 a.m. was the time that Arick would wake up so that he could get working on the farm. On this particular day it was very warm, Arick wore a cut off tee-shirt, shorts and steel toe boots. Arick, his father and their friend Kay all meet at the grain silo which is about thirty minutes away from Arick’s house. Kay and Arick’s father drive two semi trucks to the grain silo so that they can begin to empty the silo and sell the grain. As the grain is emptied from the silo Kay and Aricks father realize that the corn is wet and clumping together, so the aviator begins to stop releasing corn from the silo.
to pass on something great, a dream. Mr. Myers was run from a town. "They
He fig-ured that the normal half hour walk home might take as long as two hours in snow this deep. And then there was the wind and the cold to contend with. The wind was blowing across the river and up over the embankment making the snow it carried colder and wetter than the snow blanketing the ground. He would have to use every skill he’d learned, living in these hills, to complete the journey without getting lost, freezing to death, or at the very least ending up with a severe case of frostbite be-fore he made it back to Ruby.
After Junior’s sister Mary dies in a terrible fire, he feels sad and alone. At school, his fellow students and friends make him feel better by giving him hugs and small slaps on the back. “They were worried for me. They wanted to help me with my pain. I was important to them. I mattered. Wow,” (Alexie 212). Back on the Reservation, Junior never felt important, which really put a damper on his confidence. However, at school he knows people care about him and it makes him feel good and appreciated. This experience impacts Junior’s identity and makes him a better, and more confident person. Junior goes to his first school dance, and afterwards him, his girlfriend, and a few of his friends go to a Denny’s to eat pancakes. He is poor and obviously cannot pay for the food, but he orders it anyways. Later that evening, his friend Roger finds out that he does not have enough money to pay. Instead of getting mad, Roger lends him forty dollars and goes on his way. When they got back to the school after having pancakes, Penelope, Junior’s girlfriend, finds out that he is poor and kisses him on the cheek. “But then I realized she was being my friend. Being a really good friend, in fact. She was concerned” (Alexie 127). This entire event shows Junior that being poor is not a bad thing. It lets him know that people will still be his friend even when they know he is
For the purpose of this paper, we will discuss a weather event that few think of regarding natural disasters; winter storms. Winter storms are different from a snowy day in that a winter storm can include heavy snow, damage-causing ice, high winds, dangerously low temperatures, low visibility, or any combination thereof (America’s PrepareAthon, 2015) and makes travel extremely hazardous. A winter storm can affect an entire region and victims may experience loss of utility services, limited mobility, among various personal crises (illnesses, accidents, or death). For example, between November 17 and November 20, 2014 Buffalo, New York was buried under 7 feet of snow causing thirteen fatalities, hundreds of roof collapses/structural failures, thousands of stranded motorists, downed trees, and power outages in addition to food and gas shortages (National Weather Service, n.d.). In the most severe winter storms, snow plows, and emergency services personnel often have a difficult time keeping up with the needs of the region; therefore, it may be hours, days or even weeks until conditions are safe and services are
Portions of the United States experienced an exceptionally cold winter this year. Here in North Carolina we had three months of overnight temperature below freezing with temperatures in the 20s. I have lived in the Raleigh area for 25 years and have never experienced a winter so consistently cold with thick layers of ice on windshields every morning and frost on the roofs of homes that remained frozen until the middle of the morning. The act of cleaning up snow and ice brought back memories of growing up in the 1960s in the far north of New Jersey where temperatures remained below freezing for months and the ice on local lakes was solid enough to support the weight of a tractor to plow away the snow so everyone could ice skate, and we did skate there for at least two months. Recent winters in my hometown have been so mild that the lake did not freeze at all and even the Canada geese did not migrate south, but remained there in NJ. This winter, while we were freezing inside our homes back here in Raleigh, the news media continued to debate the global warming issue. The conflict between the weather outside for me vs. the news reports of global warming made me pause and question where the truth lies. My research uncovered that global warming is very real and, in fact, explains the shift in air currents that caused the extreme weather this winter that is negatively impacting millions of lives. In conclusion, the time is now when politicians must legislate strong actions to minimize man’s contribution to global warming and enact measures to provide emergency assistance wherever these violent weather patterns cause crises.
dream and what could happen in the end of that dream. He died on the
The year was 1992; a cold December arctic wind had brought a chance of snow to the area. It was the weekend and time to relax after a long hard week at work. The weather service had predicted several inches of snow to blanket the region by the next day. Not to worry: it was the weekend and traveling was not a necessity.