Working Through The 'Deep Freeze'

CEDAR RAPIDS - The bank clocks throughout the corridor blared the ugly truth to anyone driving by.

4.  -2.  -1.  3.

While the banks may not be as accurate as, say, the National Weather Service, their temperature displays served as a constant reminder of the cold.

People spent Friday trying to walk as little as possible when outside, especially from a car, truck or van to the warm indoors.

Except for the people who had to work outside on Friday in the sub-zero temperatures.

Kenneth Hubbard has spent the last 15 years along the corner of 42nd Street NE & Marilyn in Cedar Rapids, helping students at Pierce Elementary School get across a busy street. 

Hubbard offered a look at his tried-and-true method of fighting off the cold.

"Big gloves, they're awful heavy, thick coat and if this one doesn't work, we put the Hawkeye coat on," said Hubbard before the kids trickled out of school on Friday afternoon.

In Marion, Mark Morgan, owner of Foster's Heating & Air Conditioning, said he will probably have six workers "on call" for Friday night.

"It would be much more frantic if this was November," said Morgan.  "It's winter in Iowa and it's late in the winter so, yeah, a lot of repair work."

Between UPS drivers delivering packages and workers on the unforgiving wind-tunnel that is the Eastern Iowa Airport tarmac, the work needed to be done.

Yet once the sun dropped and people got home for the night, some chose to stay in and let others head out to the cold.

"Nobody wants to leave their house and I don't blame them," said Travis Bark, owner of Happy Joe's on Williams Boulevard in Cedar Rapids.  Bark was in the middle of the Friday night dinner rush when we dropped in.

Delivery drivers hustled through the kitchen to get the pizzas out.

"In extreme temperatures, we expect to be busy."