1977 - The Icicle

There were so many things to like about ice & snow as a kid... as an adult... well... not so much.


1977 - The Icicle

After being snowed into my house for 3-days I arrived back at the theatre to find a notice from the fire department. My theatre would be closed down that night if my emergency exit was not cleared of ice. “OK,” I thought, “I’ve got another ice build-up from the draining roof. That’ll take a good 15-minutes.” I opened the front door and entered, locking it behind me. My day was just beginning and the theatre wouldn’t open for another 5-hours. I figured there was plenty of time to fix the problem. I started for my office, upstairs, but changed my mind and headed for the rear exit to see how serious the problem was. Normally the ice build-up was minor and a good push would force the door open and a few shovels of icy snow would clear the problem. I could barely see a light under the door that illustrated that the mound was high enough to shade but not enough to actually block the near-mid-day light. I pushed the release bar. Nothing. Not even a budge. I pushed harder…no response…none at all. It was time to examine the problem from outside. Considering the just-past storm that buried the roads and limited travel the last few days there was probably a higher pile than normal. I rounded the corner of the building expecting to see a small pile of ice and snow piled in front of the door. Instead I was met with a huge icicle. As there was a small scupper on the roof so any build-up of water on the flat roof could drain off and I expected that there might be a small icicle that had dripped onto the door and frozen it shut. This is not what I was greeted with. Instead, as I rounded the corner I saw a huge icicle that extended from the roof to the ground. It easily covered the entire door with a 4’ wide and 3’ thick column of ice that glittered in the late-morning sun almost glowing in the shadows as the ice reflected the sunlight through the full extent of the column. “Great!” I thought and repeated the word aloud adding a few 3 and 4-letter words for full effect. This was going to take awhile.

I had no tools with which to hack away at this solid block of ice. I had a few tools and bladed weapons that had traveled from San Diego with me but nothing that could really take on this obstruction unless…I thought of my WWII era bayonet thinking, “Perhaps I could chip this thing away enough to get the door opened.” I headed for the front entrance, to my tools, stored backstage, then back to the main entrance and around the building to the fire exit.

An hour later I had several big chunks of ice chopped off the column in various spots hoping to find a weak point that would be the key to releasing the entire mass. There had been absolutely no response from the icy column which still glowed in the deepening winter shadows and stood as solid and sturdy as when I first saw it. I stood back and examined my work which looked ineffective and haphazard. It looked like there was a weak spot near the top of the door so I dug out one of the voids I had created and climbed up to hack away at that height. 15-minutes later I was sweating and my feet were freezing. I’d done nothing but create another void in the column. It had shattered into a small fist-sized hole in the ice that would actually hold my weight as I stood inside one of the lower spots and held onto this higher void as I chipped away with my left hand. The column didn’t seem to be budging but my bayonet was now sharp as a razor blade having sharpened itself against the hard ice. Another spot a bit higher drew my attention and I reached for this spot failing to effectively reach it as my body was extended too far to get a blow with any force behind it. I reached forward and slid back but feeling myself falling forward. I tossed the blade off to the side and fell onto my hands. The right arm, drained of blood and weakened from chipping away at an overhead mark, collapsed and I fell forward hitting my chin on the ice and rolling onto my left side. I sat up shaking my head and checking my chin for blood – nada – no blood – I was still ok. Standing up I stepped back to review my work. I noticed I had several voids chipped into the column now reaching up from ground level to about 10-feet off the ground. This was perhaps halfway up the icicle and a thought crossed my mind: “I wonder if I could climb this thing to the top and release it at the point where it turned from a sheet of roof ice to an icicle?”

I clambered up as high as possible looking for a spot that would offer another good place to chip another, what I now thought of as a, step to help me to the roof. Climbing as high as possible I could see, about 7’ off the ground, that the door jamb jutted out a bit from the wall and might make an easy 3” ledge. I chipped away at this for just a minute when the entire section above the door gave away revealing a metal edge that now stood naked and strong above the door. Levering myself up another step I began chipping a new hand-hold a couple of feet higher eventually making enough steps that I could, with a running start, get almost all the way up the wall only requiring a few more steps. Another 45-minutes passed and despite one collapse of a single handhold the ice was cold enough to hold as I chipped the remaining handholds. It was too slick to climb from a dead stop but a quick run and a couple of leaps used my momentum to get higher than I had been previously been. My foot rested on the ledge above the door as I carefully explored the strength of the remaining handholds. They held firm as I now s-l-o-w-l-y inched up the face of the column moving carefully from spot to spot. I was busy looking for my next foothold when I realized my hand had just reached the roof. Looking down – I was really high off the ground and it looked like I was much higher than it looked from the ground - I abstractly realized I really didn’t want to fall from here – it would not be good news. Even sliding down the length of ice would still abrade any exposed skin and perhaps make a significant rip in my pants. A small air conditioner fitting that had been discarded sometime in the past was frozen to the ice sheet but was just an inch or so out of reach. I braced my self and threw my self forward barely catching the fitting with the tips of my fingers and pulled. The ice, being slippery as ice, allowed me to inch forward until I could re-new my grip. I got one leg over the lip of the roof. As my leg thrust over the top the fitting broke loose and a started to slip backwards. Hooking my leg over the edge and somehow holding the ankle of the same leg with both hands stopped my slide and I slowly managed to climb a few inches higher where I could shift my weight over my right side so I could slide onto the heavily iced and snowed roof.

I looked over the edge which now appeared to be much higher than it looked from the ground. I chipped away at the lip of the roof trying to separate the column of ice from the building. I had now been at this for around 3-hours and had several holes chipped into the column that I was hoping would weaken the icy hold on my back door. As I leaned forward, and as far down as possible, I chipped away at the ice not noticing a crack that was beginning to form down the right-hand edge of the door and fracturing through the ice in a chaotic pattern of fractals caused by the crazing of the ice. I had managed to chip almost the entire lip of the roof-ice away from the edge. On the left-hand side of the frozen door was a lump of ice that supported the balance of the column and was the final spot where the ice held on to the roof as well as the wall/door. I managed to chip away the top of this lump but it just would not fracture. I leaned farther out, holding the icy lip of the roofline for support. As I brought my arm back for a big blow from the bayonet I heard a loud crack… I froze in place waiting to see if I was a part of the fracturing ice… silence. I moved the arm forward with great vigor trying to put my entire body weight at the point of the knife but as the blade came down a big chunk of the ice suddenly fell away exposing the bare brick wall. The chunk of ice fell into the alley. The blade bit into brick. I leaned far out hanging onto the little bit of edge and brick and wedged the blade in between the now bare wall and the next chunk of ice. It wedged in abut an inch but with some gentle persuasion and some more forceful pounding on the handle I managed to get the blade deeper, around 8 inches, behind the ice. I removed my gloves to enable my bare fingers to get behind the ice. Using the blade as a lever and a lumpy brick as a fulcrum I pushed and pulled, getting my fingers in back enough to pull the ice slightly out and the blade deeper in until, with a loud crack, a huge section of the icicle fell away. I noticed that now, if any more ice came lose I would be stuck on the roof of this building, in the middle of a very cold day.

Then it began to snow.

Big, wet soft flakes of snow drifted to the ground. Because they were wet they fell faster then big fluffy flakes. Within just a couple of minutes I noticed the ice was being covered by a light covering of this wet snow and realized if I didn’t get off the roof now, that option might close in the next couple of minutes. I eased myself over the side hanging on to the lip of the roof and let myself down until my feet touched the jagged end of the still clinging icicle. My foot slipped of the curved, slippery surface twice before I found a reasonable shelf. As I was now hanging by my elbows and forearms I lowered myself, increasing the weight on the fragile ice. I could feel the vibration through the wall as someone slammed a door inside the building. People were beginning to arrive for work. I had been working on this thing for four hours and needed to have this blockage cleared within the hour if I was going to open the theatre.

As I put my full weight on the ice ledge I heard another crack and my foothold suddenly fell away. As my weight had been completely on that foot I felt myself slide downward. Grasping at the roof I felt it scrape over my bare fingers and then onto the bare brick which was quickly replaced by cold, very cold and rough ice. With the covering of wet snow there was no purchase and I slid on my stomach down the 15 or so feet with hands and fingers grasping uselessly for something to grab. I hit a cut step on my slide which slowed my downward journey so I could barely grasp the step as it went by. It stopped for half-a-second hoping, in the back of my mind that this would be enough to break the slide but, just as I came to a rest, the little shelf gave away with almost the entire remainder of the icicle tumbling down on top of me. Luckily I had been slowed just a foot or so from the ground so I didn’t fall far before I began to be covered by snow and sharp, heavy ice. I looked up to see a single line of ice filling in the cracks on the right side of the door, near the handle and running across the top and barely glowing with the mid-afternoon winter light. A lump of wet snow clung tenuously to the ledge above the door in the places where I had not stepped

Initially I was more concerned about the snow and ice that had tumbled inside my collar and was now in the small of my back until I realized my feet and legs were covered by ice. There was no pain but plenty of numbness including my bloody fingertips. Realizing my lack of feeling in my legs I had a second of panic until I kicked out and chunks of ice flew in every direction. I sat for a few seconds until I heard pounding from inside the theatre. Someone was obviously trying to get out of the, still frozen shut, door. The pounding stopped and I heard steps running away from the door. I brushed snow and ice from my body as I stood up. By the time I was clear my assistant manager and the usher came sliding around the corner. Their legs began backpedaling quickly to stop their headlong rush. Their shoes slipped ineffectively on the ice and Greg slid onto his backside. He caromed into me after banking off the first pile of ice, bouncing into the wall then on to me. My assistant, Kathy, also failed to stop on the slippery ice and we all tumbled together into the pile of ice and snow. The last of the icicle came loose and fell in big, heavy pieces all around us. When the action stopped we looked at each other, covered in loose snow but completely unscathed, untouched by even a single shard of ice. Greg and I looked around and, then, at each other, spontaniously breaking into gails of laughter. Kathy looked disgusted and left to further prepare the snack-bar for business as Greg and I attacked the last little bit of ice that still clung to the ground immediately in front of the exit. In 15-minutes we were done and headed back inside for hot chocolate.

We opened on schedule.