|
|
Home
> About Denny Wiggers
 |
|
|
The
Record's March 17, 2004 Bergen County Edition featured an article
that included an interview with Denny Wiggers.
|
 |
| Wednesday, March
17, 2004 |
| The
ice of March |
| Late-winter
snow knocks us for a loop |
CARMINE GALASSO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER |
| - Jeffery Page |
On
Monday, before the snow, women walking down East Ridgewood Avenue
did a double take when they spotted the array of bright colors
and spring designs in the window of the Leapin' Lizards shop.
Nice white tennis dress with a blue sweat shirt. Nice long yellow
dress for evening wear. Nice long blue party skirt with big
yellow flowers. The spring line. Nothing bulky. Nothing to protect
you from the cold.
Then came Tuesday and the snow.
"It was so busy the other day. But this,"
said Kelly Hennessy, the manager of the Ridgewood store. Her
voice dropped off. The place was empty and the people passing
by in the snow kept their heads down, ignoring the colors and
designs.
This is the time when people think about
spring clothes, but snow a few days before the arrival of spring
has a way of making them think about other things. |
After
the Arctic winter, which sent the temperature and wind chills
into single-digit madness - sometimes below zero, sometimes
above - you might expect them to be thinking how best to do
something about that raw blackened patch that only last autumn
was a garden but which now looks like a Superfund site.
Snow does weird things to otherwise
rational people. Where was everyone? Maybe buying a box of cocoa
at the supermarket.
Got to have hot chocolate available when the blizzard comes.
Maybe stocking up on milk, bread, a dozen eggs, and, oh, yeah,
maybe a Sterno stove in case the range gives out. Can't be too
careful.
"This is when people have had just about
enough of winter. They're tired of gray and they want to see
some brightness and color," said Jessica Morton, an owner of
Ridgefield Farms, a garden center in Clifton. But there was
no one walking around Ridgefield Farms checking out the big
displays of vegetable and flower seeds, no one wishing to take
a chance and buy some hearty pansies to put in the yard under
a little burlap hood so they stay warm.
Morton didn't know where her customers were.
Even without the snow and even if spring
were not just about 72 hours away, it's too early to actually
put seeds in the earth. But it's a time to plan a garden, a
time to imagine a little sustained warmth, a time to pretend
that your thumb, which is not green, nevertheless won't cause
the mass death of objects of horticulture later in the year.
But no one paid a visit to Jessica Morton
and she planned to close early. Why suffer?
Denny Wiggers,
the owner of a garden center that bears his name in Paramus,
was in the same fix.
On Saturday, people weren't necessarily
ready to write a check or hand over a credit card to buy that
which would make their gardens beautiful. It was a day to take
a stroll through Wiggers' 19th-century greenhouse just, as he
put it, "to get a breath of spring." You know that wonderful
earth smell in greenhouses. On the weekend, some people checked
out Wiggers' garden statuary. He has for sale a bronze bust
of 19th-century industrialist Andrew Carnegie. It's not certain
who would decorate the back yard with Carnegie. Elvis, maybe.
The Beatles, maybe. But Andrew Carnegie?
"We also have a marble of the guy who
invented the elevator," Wiggers said. "Not Otis, the other guy."
There was no browsing on Tuesday.
"Snow or no snow, maybe it's just a
little too early," Wiggers said. Maybe they were in the soup
aisle deciding between clam chowder and pasta e fagioli.
Physicians often get cancellation calls
the night before a snowstorm is due, said Amy Fabano, a receptionist
for Dermatology Associates in Glen Rock. "Some people hear 'snow'
and they panic. So they call when they get the news," she said.
But by midafternoon, cancellations actually seemed a little
lighter than usual.
Over the weekend at Raymond Brothers
Landscaping in Hillsdale, Todd Raymond had the plows removed
from his 16 vehicles. Then it was a full week before spring,
and temperatures moderate with a slight chill.
Who could have known what Tuesday would
bring?
"We were taken completely by surprise
so now we've had to put all the plows right back on," Raymond
said. So his workers re-bolted the plows and waited. The phone
rang, but not off the hook.
Here's Todd Raymond's rule for gauging
the volume of calls. "Usually they call when they panic. Usually
they panic when they see it sticking," he said.
It wasn't sticking. (At least not yet.)
It was possible that all the people
who were not buying capris, not looking at seed displays, not
thinking about taking a pot of pansies home, not looking at
Andrew Carnegie, and not wondering whether to go to the doctor
or using the snow as a heaven-sent excuse to stay home, were
sitting across from Bob Mouzakis of The Travel People of Lodi,
a travel agency.
But they weren't there either.
"If it sticks they might call, maybe
look for a way to get out for a while. They're the people who've
just had it with winter," Mouzakis said.
Another agent, Judy Messieno, the owner
of Bergen Travel, said, "When it starts sticking, I might get
a couple of calls from people wanting to go where it's warm,"
she said. "This time of year, Mexico and the Caribbean are very
popular."
And no wonder. In midafternoon, the
temperature in Mexico City was 75 with a chance of a little
rain.
If not at the supermarket, maybe that's
where all the missing people were.
© The Record/www.northjersey.com |
|
Location and directions
|
|
|
