Here in Fall River, we plow on

Fall River was visited on Thursday by nearly every evil winter offers, evils that will linger this weekend. Snow. Huge amounts of snow. Cold air that hurts to get into your lungs. Winds that fold you in half.

Cars that won’t start. Cars that stall. Cars that slide off the road or get stuck or vanish into a snow drift. For the numerous Fall Riverites who park on the street, parking is the battle it is whenever the city declares a parking ban.

Burst pipes. Hours lost at work. Rowdy, bored kids home from school. Worry.

But we are seasoned battlers here in Fall River. Many of us won our spurs in the Blizzard of 1978, when the city just stopped for a week or so. Even those of us who weren’t alive in 1978 are scarred from other battles with the snow.

We complain about it, of course, but we retain the stubborn pride all New Englanders have in their winter weather.

A blizzard is no joke. People fall and get hurt, sometimes badly. People get into car wrecks and get hurt, sometimes badly. People die sometimes.

But complain or boast, the truth is we’re stuck with our winters. We say, “It’s been a mild one,” or, “It’s been a bad one,” and that gauges the winter for us.

Over the decades, we invented everything from snow blowers to remote starters for our vehicles, heated gloves, four-wheel drive vehicles and a variety of new fabrics from which to make cold weather clothing.

Snow still knocks us flat, though. Nature gives ground to technology very, very slowly. If we’re better off than grandpa with his wool coat and his metal shovel, it’s not by that much, not when the blizzard hits.

We may dream of retiring to Florida, as all good New Englanders dream of warmer climates. But a lot of us stay right where we are, growing a little wiser, and a little more tired, until we are blessedly retired and no longer have to go to work in the darn stuff.

Sometimes when we are retired, we celebrate by being the woman or man on the block who neither cleans off nor shovels out the car, but instead just stays home until the stuff melts off naturally. What bliss!

But not Thursday. Thursday, if your place of work wasn’t closed, or if they didn’t tell you to stay home, you somehow made it to and from the job.

You shoveled and snow-blowed, and struggled to make the car start, and you showed up at work. You were cold, angry and quite possibly profane, but you were at work, and you proceeded to spend most of your shift wondering how you’d get home. Some of you slept where you work. Hospital workers and others often do.

Raise your coffee cup and toast yourself. You’re a New Englander.