Digging out a scoop at a time

Scoop by scoop, Omahans dug into the chore of digging out of their snowbound homes, driveways and streets today.

And if they could spin and slide their cars out of their neighborhoods to major thoroughfares, they found the going fairly easy.

Many main streets, including major east-west thoroughfare Dodge Street, were plowed clear, except for snow piled in wind rows in the center lane in many places.

But it was no-going for Brandon and Dani Scholes, who live just a block north of Dodge on 33rd Street.

The Scholes were digging out their Ford Focus on unplowed 33rd Street with avalanche-style shovels four hours ahead of an afternoon job interview for Brandon.

"We're getting an early start,'' he said.

Brandon is a second-year pharmacy student at Creighton University. Debi is an auditor at the KPMG accounting firm.

A few miles west, Dr. Theresa Townley and Luke Thomas successfully cleared a deep drift in their Country Club neighborhood driveway at 53rd and Lake Streets, only for Townley to get their low-slung Toyota Camry stuck in the street.

Ten more minutes of digging and Townley was on her way to work.

In northwest Omaha, Erin Green's morning commute lasted only five blocks before her Honda CRV high-centered on a drift.

She'd been trying to make her way from near 144th and Fort Streets to Boys Town.

"So I thought, ‘Well, what do I do now?' " she said. What she did was hike back home, through snow up to her knees, to see if her husband could dig out their vehicle. With a helpful tow from a neighbor, the SUV was back home before long.

"Now we're in a pay-it-forward mode," helping another neighbor clear his walks, she said.

Green said only about 20 percent of the employees in her training department at Boys Town made it to work this morning. Meanwhile, her kids, 4 and 7, were glorying in a day off from preschool and school.

"They're doing a little snow dance."

In the southern Rockbrook neighborhood, near 100th and Nina Streets, Mike Luebbert was snowed in away from his job as a psychologist downtown at the Nebraska Correctional Youth Facility.

"I'm not going anywhere. . . . I figure I'll wait till late this afternoon to shovel," he said.

The day before, having barely nursed his Corolla home through the deepening snow of his hilly neighborhood at midday, he said, he took the opportunity to pull his sons, ages 5 and nearly 2, around in a one-horse open sleigh, which began its life as a cardboard box.

"I was the horse."

A couple blocks away, Jim Krieger was lamenting having shoveled four times since Sunday -- with no end in sight, thanks to the wind-whipped snow and a driveway that runs perpendicular to the northerly winds. But at least he and his wife, Kathy, didn't need to be anywere today, he said.

"We're both retired," he said. "She's spending the day inside making cookies."

Meanwhile in Sarpy County's Meridian Park subdivision, three streets at a four-way stop off 166th Street were clogged with snow drifts and stuck vehicles — one tow truck, one SUV and one Acura.

Dane Becker dug out and pushed out his silver Acura with the help of two residents of 166th Street.

Becker, a chiropractor at Becker Chiropractic, said he couldn't get in Tuesday and some patients wondered if he could make it in today.

"I better try," Becker said.

"You tried," snow helper Angela Sharp said.

"I tried," Becker said before turning his car back home.

It wasn't all work and no play on the day after the big storm.

At Memorial Park, Larry Roland and children Jack, 4, and Dottie, 7, had the popular sledding hill to themselves at mid-morning.

"I think too many people read the news and decided it would be too cold,'' Roland said. "I think they were right.''

It was 3 degrees and the wind was whipping across the open slope.

World-Herald staff writer Jeffrey Robb contributed to this report.

Contact the writer:

444-1127, david.hendee@owh.com

444-1057, christopher.burbach@owh.com

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