There’s No Business Like Snow Business

When I was a child, it seemed like there were many winters that we had huge drifts that accumulated over many snowfalls. The snow came down fast and thick over two days laying down twenty-two inches in my driveway, daring me to remove it. I started the challenge, carving a pathway out from my basement to the woodpile and beyond. From my basement door to the roadway, it is about one hundred feet. Slowly, and as I later found out painfully, I shoveled an open path wide enough to roll my empty wheelbarrow out to the stack of wood and wheel a loaded one back inside.

Next, I shoveled around my car to free it from the snowy grip holding it in place by the sheer weight of billions of fluffy flakes. I extended the cleared runway up my walkway to the stairs from my porch. Standing on my porch, my spirits were flagging as I studied what I had accomplished and what I had to do yet. Out at the roadside where the snowplows deposited the gleanings, the snow was piled almost three feet high. I knew from past experiences that it would be packed solidly, doubling the exertion needed to move it.

I stepped down from the porch to renew the attempt to complete the Herculean task. I had barely started when my neighbor started up the road with his tractor with a large, wide scoop bucket on the front. Stopping, he asked if he could help. I quickly said “yes” and he spun the tractor into my drive, using the bucket to scrape heavy loads of the snow into my side yard, each scoop would have made thirty or more of my snow filled shovel.

I slipped inside of my house while he was pushing the thick blanket of snow into tall mounds. When he finished, I asked him, “What do I owe you?” He tried to refuse and money, but I convinced him to take something for fuel and said, “I may need you again.” He laughed, and drove away to help other neighbors.