Feb 25, 2003 4 min read

I laugh at winter. Well, it’s snowing once more. You would think the skies would be completely depleted of any kind of moisture after the past week or so of snow, rain, ice, sleet. That foot or so of white stuff that dumped on us last week was plenty. Now, the forecast calls for several more inches.

Have you managed to clean out the last dumping? I have searched for the sidewalk in front of our house for days now but can find only traces of where I think it may be, a slight depression in the white canvas covering it. As for the driveway, we call the two pyramid shaped mounds at the end of it the “Pillars of Hercules.’

This was a moist snow, too, which meant it piled up heavily, layer upon layer, making it that much more difficult to remove. Churned up, it became an even worse mess.

One thing that always happens in civilized climes during winter is city workers plow the streets. In itself, that is a good thing. But with all good things there has to be a negative. In this case, when they plow the streets, their steel truck-mounted blades carry the collected snow along so it gathers weight and size. The trapped boulders of snow look for escape, finding it at the end of any cleared driveway, walkway, street, etc. It seems like adding insult to injury, especially after you have spent muscle, perspiration and time scraping the stuff away. It’s not the workers’ fault. It just happens that way.

I can’t complain much, however. After the mess at the end of the driveway where it joins the street grabbed onto and held my poor car in its icy grip I figured I was going to be in for some backbreaking shoveling. During the day at the office I thought of different things I might be able to do to lessen the burden. I even thought about getting the garden hose out and blasting the snow out with its high-pressure spray.

In the end I concluded it would be too inefficient and wasteful. After all, I’m paying for water now, not like when we survived with a well during our mountain days.

Anyway, at day’s end I planned on parking the car on what clear part of the street there is in front of the house so I could better attack the problem.

You can’t imagine my surprise when I arrived to find the end of the drive devoid of those iceberg-like masses of hard, crusty snow. The driveway wasn’t completely clear but had been shoveled enough that I could pull the car up without first having to gun the engine.

My lovely wife and our friend Kennie Sue had been home that day and I instantly concluded they had done the work. How, I couldn’t imagine since the snow was more like rock than a soft powder.

Thinking I would find them lying prostrate in the house, moaning and gasping for life, I rushed to the front door.

“Well, what a job you did,’ I said, finding my wife upright on the couch. Her smile told all.

“We did it in shifts,’ she said. She and Kennie Sue had worked three times that day, each time removing a little more of the impediment, until they had enough of the drive open through which to pull a car.

“How did you do it?’ I proclaimed.

“She used the scoop and I used the shovel,’ she said, obviously through a haze of aspirin she took to dull her aching muscles.

“Oh, and you owe Kennie Sue $10,’ she added.

Unfortunately, Kennie Sue’s father had picked her up just moments before I got home so I haven’t been able to pay her yet. It will be money well spent. And, the next time we have one of those snows of the century, I will just laugh and derisively snap my fingers at it. Because now I have a secret weapon.

I call it my “Snow Savager.’ And it’s fueled by $10 and a handful of aspirin.

But don’t ask to borrow it. Its range doesn’t go beyond my driveway.

Have a good day.

Jim Pletcher is the Herald-Standard’s business editor. E-mail: jpletcher@heraldstandard.com.