Injustice in Independence

          It was one of their worst winters ever.  The city was literally frozen in its tracks.  Ice clung to everything. Electrical wires and telephone poles were leaning like the Tower of Pisa.  Tree limbs hung to the ground from the weight of the glistening ice.  And it just kept coming!

            After only a few short hours had passed, most of the city was without power.  The phone lines were down and many were the vehicles buried under the weighty trees that had no bend left to give.  The road crews were stalled, caught unprepared for this sudden blizzard of ice so swift and heavy that it was cracking windows as it descended.  The police station only being kept alive by the back up power of an aging generator.  Paralyzed!  The city of Independence, Missouri was closed up like a ghost town.  Business owners were trapped in their stores without a way home.  With no power, the darkened storefronts were getting colder as the sounds of falling trees crunched through the silence.  The sounds of ice slamming its way through the, shortly before busy city, destroying much in its path, was like hearing the displays on the 4th of July.  Big booms were deep & earthquaking and followed by high-pitched cracks and pops as transformers blew.  Sparks flew across streets and yards, giving off an eerie glow in the darkness.

            Independence Day in the middle of winter!  If there hadn''t been so much damage, it might have been an artist''s dream.  At the end of the storm, the town was actually very beautiful, everything glistening under the stars.  But, you didn''t have to look far to see the homes with trees jutting through windows or lying prone upon the rooftops.  By nightfall, the president had declared Independence a National Disaster.

            At sunrise the road crews were on the streets, but they were mostly sliding.  The road crew truck driven by Cole Mulligan, went into such a skid that he was heading down 23rd Street sideways, nearly sideswiping a truck of debris heading for a designated dump site.  Just as Cole was struggling to straighten out his truck, another patch of ice was under his tires, causing a swerve into an empty lot.

            Nose-diving into the large ditch that surrounded the lot, Cole hit his head on the rear-view mirror and cursed.  After several unsuccessful tries, Mulligan, resigned to the fact that he was going nowhere, pried open his ice caked door and slid out to check the damage.  What he saw there, half buried in the winter''s mess, struck him harder than any ice he had encountered

            Yes, this would be one of the worst winters ever!!