Snow Removers

Today I am grateful for snow removers.  Any kind.  The big plows, small plows, push shovels, lifting shovels, snow blowers, ice scrapers, mouth-breathing teenage boys, fashioniesta girls. . .I’ll take them all!

I like shoveling snow.  I can hear you all groaning.  It gives me a peaceful, nostalgic feeling because usually I hear my dad when I’m shoveling snow and he’s been gone for over twenty years.  Growing up in Wisconsin you “learn” to shovel snow as soon as you can walk.  My dad practically used a line-level along the driveway and sidewalk to be sure we got every flake to the edge leaving a nice, clean line.

You know that little triangle you get when you slide the shovel to the edge?  You shovel, move over, shovel again and there is often a little triangle of snow and here, in Pennsylvania most people don’t bother going back.  It makes me crazy.  I tried that in Wisconsin.

“Clean that up!” my dad would shout.  “But dad, it’s only a little bit, what does it matter.”  Dad did not like back-talk.  “Okay, you leave it now, then it freezes and what are you gonna do next time it snows?”  I tried to claim it would melt before then.  “Melt?  Melt?” he’d shout louder, over the gale winds that blew the snow right back where I had just shoveled.  “This is Wisconsin!  It ain’t gonna melt until June!!!  You keep goin’ the way you are and you got no driveway left ‘cuz it gets skinnier every time you shovel!  Clean that up!”  So I did, over and over again.  Shovel after shovel full.  Sometimes cutting blocks like I was building an igloo, then marching the bricks to the pile.

When we lived on a huge corner lot, here in Pennsylvania, I would fall to my knees in gratitude on the white stuff when the neighbor did my 45 mile long sidewalk with his snow blower.  Now we live in a 55 plus community and we pay an association fee to have the snow removed.  Last time they did such a crappy job I was out lifting and hoisting, trying to get at least a portion of my driveway recaptured.  Who doesn’t shovel three feet down the whole driveway?  How am I supposed to get out of my car? Don’t they have a father?

This time they did a great job, even coming back to “clean it up” after I brushed 15 inches off of my car. I was so grateful I didn’t have to do the whole thing.  I only had to straighten it out a little because when it snows, I still hear my dad’s voice and they had left triangles.  I didn’t get the line-level out.  That’s growth.