Christmas is a time for family. Mine was on the other side of the world in Thailand. I had a ticket reserved for a January 10 departure. My sister insisted on my spending the holiday with her in Boston. She was worried about my head, since our beloved father had passed away in November. I boarded a Chinatown bus northbound to South Station. Christmas Eve was with friends and family. Christmas was strictly family. My sister missed my father and so did the rest of us. Our parents had been good people.
My plans for the weekend were fluid, until I discovered my nephew Matt on the telephone. He was calling his airline for confirmation of his flight to DC. All departures on the East Coast had been canceled for that Sunday. The US Weather Service was forecasting a major storm. 24-36 inches. Amtrak was sold out. The only out from Boston was the Chinatown bus. Matt and I packed within minutes and my sister drove us to South Station. We caught the 11AM bus. The snow was light, but the traffic was heavy. People were trying to get home before the worse. Upon our arrival in Chinatown I offered Matt a place to stay in Brooklyn.
"I got to be in work tomorrow."
He worked for an internet company. It was not affiliated with the CIA. At least that was his cover and I had been brought up to not ask questions about jobs in Washington. I put him on a DC-bound bus and took the F train over to Brooklyn. It was only 4PM, so I stopped in Frank's Lounge for a beer.
Several of the regulars were in their Sunday seats at the bar. We drank several rounds before looking out the window onto a terrifying scenario. The snowstorm had been upgraded to the wintery tornado. The accumulation was already ten inches and there was no sign of let-up. None of us had anywhere to go tomorrow. The radio had announced the trains were being taken out of service.
"We where we are and nowhere else." Homer announced in his thick Mississippi accent. He was happy to be in Frank's. It was our favorite bar, but we were hungry. He made several phone calls for take-out.
The only response was from a Chinese restaurant up the block. I ordered the General Tso's Chicken extra chili. Homer followed suit.
"You know General Tso's Chicken doesn't exist in China." It supposedly was invented by the Hunan-born chef T. T. Wang in 1972.
"How the hell am I supposed to know that. I ain't ever been to no damned China." Homer traveled mostly on a straight line. Brooklyn to Philadelphia, Mississippi, his hometown. He certainly hadn't seen any snow in his youth, but plenty since he left the Delta over fifty years ago fleeing a lynch mob. He liked it back there now. Family and "The crack has gone out of some of the crackers, especially since my shotgun ain't never out of reach."
"Well, I have." Only one time to Yunnan, Sichuan, and Tibet in 1996. "And there was no General Tso Chicken."
"I don't care about no China. I'm here in Brooklyn."
The traffic on Fulton was extinctized by the snow. There were no pedestrians. The drifts were over a foot. We started to fear that our food wasn't going to come and we would have to survive on the stale packets of chips from behind the bar, but after a half-hour the door banged open for a delivery man covered by snow. He held two bags of food. We cheered his arrival and Homer gave him a $5 tip.
"That's because Tipping ain't no city in China and a Chinaman will deliver your food even when the US Mail can't get through. Here's to the Chinaman."
We raised our glasses and ate like this was the last meal on Earth.
Looking out the window that's just the way it felt.
February 20, 2026
A wet afternoon with the meteorologists forecasting a nor'easter bearing down on the East Coast for the weekend. Nothing like the Holiday blizzard of 2010, but this has been a hard winter and it ain't over yet.
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