Friday, September 07, 2018

SLOGGING THROUGH WINTER... Good & bad (Part 169g)

SLOGGING THROUGH WINTER… Good & bad (Part 169g)

Looking around I could see most of the main floor staff had made it in. The big question was how long was the snow going to last. There hadn’t been much about the snow on the radio on my way to work so decided to call my father (the amateur weather man). He usually was pretty good about predictions and I asked why he hadn’t called the night before. He said that as of 10pm the storm was just a New England event and he went to bed. I asked if he’d gleaned any information on how long it would last and I definitely remember him laughing. “When it’s over…” was his answer. The reason I wanted to know was if it was going to be a prolonged event I could get some of the people out early. While on the phone Mae came up to my desk with a check to be signed and I asked  how her trip in had been. I always smile when writing about Mae… she was sort of unflappable, not letting little problems interfere with the important stuff. In typical Mae style she answered, “Nothing to it.” and was on her way back to her customer. If I could take her at her word it was more of a local event than a major ‘happening’. All I could do was to wait.

With the snow I’d forgotten about J J and the mortgage customer who was to be Elle’s and my new neighbor. Normally, house “closings” were handled at the attorney’s office. However, in the previous snow storm the roof over the porch at Gee's office (it was a locally historic house that had been restored) had collapsed. The repairs were still underway so the bank was where they took place. I saw J J come around the corner followed by a tall, gaunt, serious looking man. My first impression was “Oh no!”. Andy, the real estate agent, had given me a brief background on him and J J had let me peruse the application form, neither of which would’ve given me an indication of what he looked like. As I looked at him I was trying to remember his date of birth from the application but couldn’t. A quick guess was that he was about 70 years old. J J introduced us and I, trying to lighten our meeting up, said something really inane… “Welcome to the neighborhood…”. All I got in return was a stare from him… not good. J J tried to salvage the situation by giving me the information that I would’ve asked for and said that it would be a while until they would be starting to do anything with the house to which the man nodded affirmatively. He did finally speak saying he wanted to get back to the city before the roads got too bad. That was when I asked if it had been snowing in the city and he gave me a short answer… “No…” and turned to walk out the gate. As I watched him say his farewell to J J, I couldn’t help but wonder what Elle, I and the kids were going to be in for when he and his family did finally show up.

A by-product of the previous snow storm had been a request from some of the women to relax the dress code a bit in snowy conditions. We’d already changed it to allow the females to wear ’nice’ pants along with a jacket that covered their backsides but many still preferred to wear skirts or dresses. What they were looking for under these conditions was to wear more casual pants and sweaters in place of a jacket. Hobie and Bert (the president) conferred and agreed to it but subject to a review in the future. (In thinking about it as I write this, I would liken the results to the start of “dress down Friday” which was probably some 10 to 15 years in the future). In any case, The lack of a jacket provided some unexpected VPL’s and DP’s, the most notable being Trish. In the three plus years I’d been working in close proximity to her had only observed a few and none of them were notable. Her trousers were light gray and might’ve been wool and she was wearing a bulky sweater that only went to her waist. The first opportunity I had to really observe her was a bit of an eye opener as the pants were, for her, tight and tight enough to her hips to see the indentation of the leg elastic of her panties. That had me on ‘high alert’ and had me gazing at her backside every chance I got. But, the ’treat’ was the DP. To get three desks in the area we occupied we’d cut the space between desks to the point that it was sometimes hard to be seated in your chair and to be able to reach under the knee hole space to retrieve a dropped item. Bret was away from his desk when I looked towards the work area and saw Trish’s back at an almost horizontal position. Her head was in the knee hole space and when I stood up there it was… a DP with at least two inches of her panties showing as well as a some bare skin above them. If someone had been looking at me they would’ve thought I had a problem as I rushed around the corner of my desk and into Bret’s space. The goal was to see if I could identify the waist elastic of her panties… and I could. They were Shadowline panties, for sure. The new department store in town featured that brand of lingerie. It was like a breakthrough for me after being somewhat frustrated for three plus years. Laura had continued to ‘treat’ me to VPL’s on a fairly regular basis. Primarily choosing to wear pants suits I’d get to see the familiar diamond shape of the crotch line and it told me she was continuing to wear the Sans Soucie panties I’d gotten for her.

It was still snowing at the noon siren and Hobie was the one who made the decision to let the “outliers” who had to drive at least five miles leave early. Laura and Joanie didn’t but they’d walked to work so, with Hobie liking both of them, allowed them to go as well. Joanie was still into dresses and skirts so there hadn’t been much, if any, ‘action’ (peeks, VPL’s or DP’s) there since she’d taken over the receptionist position. But, on this day she wore high boots and when it was time to go home I was in the right position to witness her struggle to get them pulled up. Withe her wearing a skirt I didn’t get the same panty confirmation that Laura had provided but I did get to see a fair amount of white as she pulled each of her boots up.

The snow had stopped around mid afternoon. Because it was so light and with the high winds making drifts there was no way to know how much snow (in inches) had fallen, but it was substantial. Chaz had returned during his lunch break (he worked for the phone company) to make a quick pass through the parking lot to plow it. The problem with that, at least for those bank officers who parked there, was we ended up having to shovel our cars out to go home. That was when I was really glad I‘d not worn my suit. The trip home was a lot better than in the last storm as the road crews had kept up with the drifts. When I drove past Davo’s house I couldn’t help but remember the night I’d spent there in the last storm. His girlfriend, Leigh, was a ‘piece of work’; alcoholic with little modesty, and had put on quite a ‘performance’ while I was there. With Davo being a big racing fan I knew I’d see more of her during the upcoming season. That thought reminded me that there would be a baby at home when I got there as we were caring for Cliffy and Beth’s new son. Our neighbor, John (the farmer) had cleared the driveway and I was able to pull up to the garage. What had started out to be a bad day had turned out to be not so bad after all… at least to that point.

To be continued…

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