RUSH: Here’s Mark in Bethesda, Maryland. Welcome, sir, to Open Line Friday. Great to have you with us. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, good afternoon. So, anyway, on Super Bowl Sunday in 2010 we really did have a blizzard, about 30 inches in my neighborhood. I live on a court with nine houses.
RUSH: Where, in Maryland?
CALLER: In Maryland. Yes, on Super Bowl Sunday in 2010. Yep. Four years ago, almost, and I was a community organizer that day. We have nine houses and all nine neighbors chipped in and we hired a guy to plow the street that day ’cause we wanted to get out because our court’s often forgotten by the county and we live off of a main street. On Wednesday, there was a blizzard again predicted, this time only 20 inches. The guys got together and said, “We don’t need no stinking government. We’ll do it ourselves.” So as the snow fell, we kept plowing. We had our snowblowers out all day and we kept plowing the street. We couldn’t go to work, so we didn’t need any government. You know, de Blasio talks about the government’s gonna do anything. We took it in you are on own hands. We didn’t need ’em.
RUSH: Well, now, de Blasio told people in New York to stay inside. Don’t go outside. Don’t get in the way of the sanitation union. It’s too cold. You might slip because it’s slick out there. Don’t drive. You could go into a spin, and if you do drive and go into a spin, make sure you turn into the spin, not out of the spin. He didn’t want people outside at all. They couldn’t handle it. People can’t handle this kind of weather, don’t you know? They can’t handle this kind of cold weather. They can’t handle the snow, can’t handle blizzards. People in New York were told to stay inside and let the government do it, and there was a promise that there would be equal snow redistribution.
CALLER: Well, we didn’t care. We went outside. The only hurt I got is I got some blisters on my thumbs. We literally took it into our own hands and we still talking about it today. There’s good camaraderie in the neighborhood and we were able get out on Thursday morning and going to work and too other stuff, other people in our neighborhood and around were still blocked in. We didn’t care.
RUSH: Well, let me ask you about that: What about those other people in the neighborhood? Were you blowing snow on their driveways and sidewalks so that you could get out of your own?
CALLER: We were blowing it on our street onto our own yard. We have a court with nine houses. Other streets in our neighborhood were not plowed. The main street at the end of our court was plowed — and, Rush, I hate to say it. Quite frankly, we organized. We took care of it ourselves, and we profited from what we did ourselves without any help from anybody else.
RUSH: What do you mean you profited?
CALLER: We profited because we had freedom.
RUSH: Oh.
CALLER: Freedom is good.
RUSH: Oh. I thought you mighta meant you charged people.
CALLER: No. We have nine houses and there were five snowblowers on our court so we plowed it for the four that didn’t have it just because —
RUSH: Oh, you did? Okay so you plowed for everybody? You plowed for all nine?
CALLER: On our street, on our court, which doesn’t have sidewalks, that’s correct. We did.
RUSH: Wow. So you didn’t just take care of yourself? You took care of your neighbors, too?
CALLER: Well, we had to. Again, without looking at the geography of our street, there wasn’t any other streets in our neighborhood.
RUSH: Okay. So you really didn’t want to; you had to?
CALLER: Well, I wouldn’t say that. We just did it. There wasn’t any other way. If we would have just done the five houses, then the street would have still been impassable. The court would have been blocked.
RUSH: Okay, so you were just looking out for yourselves and to hell with everybody else?
CALLER: The other streets we were… The four families who didn’t have snowblowers, yeah, we did take care of ’em. So in that sense, were we socialists? I don’t know.
RUSH: And you did this because he couldn’t count on your government showing up because they usually didn’t?
CALLER: That’s right. We knew it from the past. We took care of it ourselves. Who needs the government? Especially the liberal government you have around here.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And the courts three out of the nine —
RUSH: These snowblowers, these were the kind that are motorized, that have engines?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: So emitting CO2.
CALLER: We were emitting all sorts of carbon dioxide. Who cares? Absolutely. We were polluting the air that day.
RUSH: You were damage the environment.
CALLER: Oh, well, that’s the way it goes.
RUSH: Did any women in the neighborhood object to the noise?
CALLER: No. The women were bringing us hot chocolate and tea or coffee, whatever. People were happy we were doing this.
RUSH: Really, the women served you?
CALLER: Some women, yeah, that’s right. It was a guy thing. Could a woman have done it? Sure. But the guys were the organizers.
RUSH: I like it. I think it’s a great story of rugged individualism, self-reliance, taking matters into your own hands and understanding the consequences of your actions all in one bundle.
CALLER: That’s right.
RUSH: Well, congratulations. Great story. You’re able to get in and out as you needed and you’re able to make sure that you had what you needed as a result of that, and you took care it yourself. You didn’t wait depending on people you already knew, by history, you couldn’t count on anyway?
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: And got hot chocolate and stuff in the process. That is a cool deal.