Wednesday, January 19, 2022

 January 19, 2022


I know I’ve often waxed damn near rhapsodically about the “good old days”, when the snow was so deep in the wintertime that driving down a plowed country road, one couldn’t see any of the passing scenery because the snowbanks were higher than the car’s windows.

Well, it wasn’t quite that bad on this past Monday morning, but it was close. By the time the plow went down the road clearing off the foot and a bit of snow we received during the night and into the morning, the cold white stuff was piled to a height that came to just at the bottom of the car windows. Fortunately, Monday was our daughter’s regular day off, and she hadn’t planned to go anywhere.

Our grandson had hoped to come by and give us a hand with the snow removal. Unfortunately, his car was snowed in as badly as ours were. David got the snow blower out of the basement mid-morning and slowly began to go to work on the sidewalk and our small walkway. He used the shovel for the porch and the porch steps, as well as a bathroom path in the back yard because the snow was deeper than a couple of our dogs are tall. A friend who also has small dogs coined the phrase, “a path to pee-dom”. Kind of cute.

This snow blower is the only one we’ve ever owned. We bought it several years ago, and while it is electric, it is not self-propelled. It’s large and can be nearly unwieldly if the snow is deep and heavy enough. Using the blower is a bit better than having to use a shovel, but honestly? Neither are easy for my beloved anymore.

The work took a lot out of him, but I could see he felt good that he was able to do that much. He’d planned to wait for our grandson to come and dig out the cars—but that didn’t happen. In the end, since this is house stands on a corner lot, after supper time David used that snow blower once more to clear the area between the side street and the front of our daughter’s car. Hers was parked ahead of ours, so once that area was relatively clean, she was able to drive it out, and park on the plowed side street. Then she did the same with the car that we use as our own. The snow work and car moving was done by about seven in the evening.

Then the next morning, the plow came down early, about six in the morning, and cleared the snow that had been piled up next to our vehicles. When daughter came home at around one yesterday afternoon, she parked in her usual spot and then brought my car back to its place in front of our house (and behind hers). I had been told by both my daughter and my husband that I was not going out in the snow, because it was still deep in a lot of places and really, I would likely have ended up on my ass if I had tried. Since falls are to be avoided at all costs, I gave in to their wishes.

There are times when I want to just say, bugger this getting older crap. In my thirties and forties—before my heart attack—I was quite adept at cleaning off my own car in winter and digging it out if I had to. In fact, there were times in my past when I actually enjoyed the exercise. The country house I grew up in, and that David and I lived in with our children after my mother’s passing, had a driveway that if filmed from about fifty feet up by a drone would look like a hockey stick laying on its side. We all loved that driveway because we could pull in, drive to the end, steer to the right, back up, and then drive forward and park near the back door of the house with our vehicles facing the road, so that leaving again involved no backing up whatsoever. The driveway measured about one hundred feet with the turn around, making it a fairly long one.

And before I was a married woman, and a driver, I was a teen with a shovel and yes, snow days meant I had a shoveling assignment. As long as the driveway was clear by about 3:45 in the afternoon, when Mom came home from work, all was good.

There were a few times when I shoveled the entire length of that sucker in just a few hours. And a few blessed times when one of our neighbors (who owned the quarry and would in the future be my husband’s boss) came down with his loader and cleared that one hundred feet in about ten minutes.

The good old days indeed.

Every snowfall we’ve received this winter prior to the one on Monday has melted away in less than a week. I doubt this lot will be melting anytime soon. But one thing I do know, if I know anything at all is that you really never can judge how long the snow will last or what the weather will be, forecasts be damned. And since I don’t need to leave the house until the first week of February, I guess I’ll just sit back and watch out my window to see what happens next.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury


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