Yet Another Snow Day

This is serious winter here, for the Ohio Valley anyway. Six inches of snow is nothing to the lake effect snow areas, like near Cleveland and like the town where I grew up just right of Lake Michigan. We had to get a foot of snow for schools to close, and I'm not just saying that like those old people who say they walked two miles in the snow up hill both ways to get to school, and they never complained. My father-in-law used to say that, and he grew up in Brazil.

No, I mean it when I say we've got winter. The schools have been closed state-wide, and today is the first day of class this week. First it was too cold, then it was six inches of snow, and then it was another few inches on top of that. Road crews in over a dozen plows and salt trucks keep things pretty clear on the main roads, but they can't always get to the country roads in time for school buses in the morning, so kids have been laying around watching TV and eating crap.

This is my back yard and the summer furniture that never made it
into storage for the off-season.

Sometimes after a reasonable snow fall, you can ignore the driveway because it will probably melt in a day or two anyway. But I don't think this snowfall will allow me to ignore the driveway this time around. I believe the stupid thing is demanding attention. So, I hitched up a pair of snow boots that I found in the basement store room, tucked in my jeans, wrapped my scarf around my neck, and went to work.

My snow boots and shovel.

I only finished half the driveway because the exterminator was parked on the other side. I'm not sure what they spray for in the dead of winter, but I'm sure it's something necessary. They wouldn't sell me something I don't need, would they? Anyway, while I shoveled, the bug guy went on and on about everything he could think of. He talked about the Christmas eve service at his church, the kind of music his church likes, how his pastor tells people that if they don't like it they can go somewhere else, the apartment building his son lives in at college (the same as my daughter, coincidentally), and how his best friend just died because he got the flu, and it morphed into some kind of bacterial pneumonia. The man was a saint, and if I had met him, I would have felt as if I had been in the presence of an angel.

OK, so back to digging out. When you stand outside on a snowy day and listen, and everyone else has finished shoveling so that you can't hear the sound of metal scraping cement anymore, all you can hear is the sound of your boots smashing the snow and an occasional lost crow. There are a lot of tall trees in my neighborhood, and a good wind makes their branches rattle and howl in a haunting but pleasing way. I hate to disturb that peace and solitude with the sound of my shovel and sniffing now and then, but there's work to be done.

After I had had enough of shoveling, I set my shovel aside and went inside for a cup of tea and a cookie. I wish there was a way snow plows could clear the street without making the snow at the end of my driveway twice as deep as the rest of it. I wish a pack of boys had knocked on my door and asked if they could shovel my driveway and sidewalks for a donation. I would have gladly paid.