ANOTHER MARCH 3RD

March 3rd

I lived through ninety-two March 3rds in my lifetime.  Most of them passed by unnoticed but there were a couple of exceptions, such as the one that took place just two days ago.  I got up early because there were some weighty decisions about replacing our 2017 Hyundai, getting the freeze dryer repaired, etc. but the thing that made March 3, 2022 different  was having Mother read several of the 8,764 one-line abstracts from her diary that began on Dec.23rd, 1996 and, so far, ends on March 3rd, 2022.  Between Dec. 23, 1996 and Jan. 4th, 1997 we picked up a rental car, drove Scott to New Milford, CT, to visit a friend), and got ready for Xmas and for a trip to Texas at the same.  Since everyone got cell phones for Xmas, Robert and Scott kept in touch with friends back home while we drove nonstop through CT, PA, VA, TN, KY, LA  before getting lost in Austin,TX, our destination.  While in Texas we attended Amy’s baptism, the Alamo, Fredericksburg, the Nimitz Museum, the Lyndon Johnson ranch, a New Years Eve celebration, and watched several movies before leaving Austin on Jan. 3rd, and visiting Kent and Judy in Azle TX on the way home. After Mother itemized all those events, we looked at each other in disbelief. Did we actually do all of those things? How did we survive, physically, financially and emotionally?  March 3rd was probably no different than other trips over the years but it now symbolizes “Pushing ourselves beyond the limits” just as “Ogallala” symbolizes car breakdown memories and having Cheri fly to Ct, go to my first spring semester class and hand out course outlines that I hand printed at a campground in Ogallala.

With that introduction to March 3rds there were others that were also memorable,  including the birthdate of my best friend who was born on March 3, 1930.  We celebrated his birthday so often that I usually thought of him when that date rolled around, including one that occurred 30 years later as I sat in my office at Montclair State College, N.J. on March 3rd, 1960, watching the snow fall.  I was attending my first Psychology class at TC that night so I needed to get to NY and I needed to do well in the class.  The snow didn’t let up so I decided that I had a better chance of getting there if I took the Lackawanna train but when I got to the station, the train wasn’t running and there were so many cars at a standstill that I decided to leave my car in the parking lot and hitch hike home to Towaco, NJ - about 20 miles away.  Under the circumstance it wasn’t hard to do because I merely joined an army of pedestrians who  walked along the side of the road until the traffic started moving and then stick out our thumbs for a ride. Cars would stop immediately and we had a free ride until the traffic stopped and we resumed walking.  I don’t remember how far I walked or how many rides I accepted before I reached my destination around 10:00 pm that night.  It was a paralyzing snow storm so it may have been two days before I could get back to the train station to dig my car out of the snow.  One week later another monster storm hit the area. New York suspended parking regulations so that people who normally had to look for a new parking space every day could leave their car buried in snow for days until the the city reinstated the parking rules.  Snowplows didn’t help because there was no unused space to push the snow into.  Eventually they loaded the snow into trucks and dumped the snow into the Hudson or the East River.  It took a long time.  In the mean time I would drive to my class every Thursday, find a place where there was a lot of snow, dig out a space that was big enough for my VW and park.  The process of creating parking spaces was good training for the time when I moved to NYC and had to find a different parking space every day and remember where it was the next day.  Having a VW was an advantage because I could fit into spaces that were too small for other cars, such as the time I parked next to the Grant Tomb on Riverside Drive. It took more time than usual but when I was finished parking the bumpers were touching the cars in front and back of me were touching at the same time.  It was one of my most unusual  accomplishments during the four years that I lived in NYC,