Businesses Sit Through Slow Day

Though local streets were passable and busy Tuesday afternoon, motorists were mostly passing through town, with few stopping at local businesses.

Employees at Subway said it had been a slow day, with few customers coming in for lunch. Next door, the story was different.

“It’s been business as usual,” said Dale Hellwig, owner of Highland Package Store. “People have been coming in,” including, he said, several plow drivers on their way home. "It's been a long day for them."

Up the street at Fasmart, Joe Tetreault was spending the afternoon scraping slush and ice off the parking lot to help customers get to the pumps. But Tetreault’s not an employee.

“I’m a helpful neighbor,” he said. Tetreault lives up the street and is a good friend of Allan Collazo, the assistant manager. “He’s got a lot of work to do and I’ve not nothing else to do, so why not help?”

Inside, Collazo was watching traffic from behind the store’s huge plate glass windows.

“People are fishtailing around corners,” Collazo said. “Most people are taking it slow but they’ve plowed and it’s still ice.”

At Farmington Midas, Manager Ron Llewellyn was sitting in a much cleaner shop than he’d started the day with.

“It wasn’t an awful day,” he said, “but slightly below average for this time of year.” Employees had finished up a few cars they had been working on Monday but few were coming in and several people canceled appointments, Llewellyn said.

One didn’t.

“We had a lady on the way back from taking her dog to the vet and she was scheduled to get struts and she called and wanted to come in, so we told her to come,” Llewellyn said. He gave her and her dog a ride home up her long and slippery driveway while mechanics replaced her struts.

One place people were going was the Farmington Library. Librarians said families popped in throughout the day to check out books or play on the computers for a while.

The National Weather Service is predicting clearing of the icy weather by tomorrow and then things can get back to business as usual.