A snowstorm, a fire and some neighborly help

     Last week’s snowstorm brought a lot of headaches to those in the area, which I wasn’t immune from. I was on deadline Thursday morning and had to finish the paper by 8 a.m. I got up at 6 a.m., looked out my window and couldn’t even see my car under the piles of snow Mother Nature had decided to grace us with.
     I threw on some jeans and went to the task of clearing my car. I was up to my knees in snow and that wasn’t even the difficult part.
     My little car couldn’t make it out of my parking spot so I woke my boyfriend, Bob, ignored his sleepy glares and in a panic, shooed him outside to help me. It sure is difficult to dig out of a foot of snow when you don’t have a shovel, though.
      That’s when I realized one of the only good things about this storm – the help we received from neighbors. We’ve been living in our apartment in Saco since October and have barely said boo to them.
     We met a couple of them on Thursday morning, however. A teenager with a shovel ran over to help Bob dig out my car and an older gentleman who lives on the first floor pitched in and helped push me out of the spot. At one point they were actually lifting a corner of my car off of the ground.
     Once I got on my way I hoped they could see the gratitude in my eyes as I floored it through the snow to get to work.
     Ironically, the next morning, myself and the other tenants in my apartment had another chance to get acquainted and help one another out.
     My apartment was one of those in Saco that had to be evacuated because of a gas leak. We awoke at 3:30 a.m. on Friday to Saco firefighters pounding on our door. Bob looked out the window in our third floor apartment and after seeing flames shooting up from below, yelled, “Darlin get up, and the house is on fire!”
     I think I was in my coat and out the door before he could even blink. My neighbors and I gathered outside and waited for instruction.
     I’ve always respected firefighters but could never say that I was ever in a situation where I needed their help. Good or bad, now I can say that I have and how much I appreciated their kindness to me and other tenants who were a little confused about what was happening.
     We all made sure each person had a place to go whether it be another neighbor’s house or the shelter that had been set up the previous day because of the snow.
      The funny thing is, after Thursday and Friday’s events, I now know everyone’s name in our building, and over the weekend have spent at least 20-minutes chatting with each of them.
     It pays to get to know your neighbors, and it’s also nice to put names with the faces of the people you see everyday.

-Molly Lovell