Chicopee

Without looking outside, I can tell when the weather is bad because I find myself watching a lot of television in between bouts of snowblowing and shoveling. At noon today, as the storm's end was anticipated in the next few hours, the TV weatherman was on location in downtown Chicopee, MA (an oxymoron if ever there was one). All of the stations had been running hundreds of cancellations, including some businesses. The weatherman discovered that only two businesses were open, the "Family Dollar", a discount store, and the local package store (in Massachusetts, liquor stores are universally referred to as package stores). He even interviewed the proprietor of the packie, who, in the midst of the interview,  suddenly scampered back to run his establishment as a line had formed in his absence. The humor of the moment overcame the weatherman and he quipped something to the effect that if you needed gift wrap or a twelve pack, Chicopee center had everything. I'm never going to be able to shop in the center of Chicopee again - not that I did very often, but from now on, I'll only be able to associate it with cheap gift-wrapped beer. And I'm not often in the market for cheap gift-wrapped beer.