Snow blower? Please.

See that picture? What’s missing? A snow blower.

When we were kids, heavy snow was a mixed blessing. It meant a day off from school. But the celebration was cut short when reality set in. If you were a boy, growing up in post-war America, you squandered most of that day “off” shoveling snow. Ton after ton after ton, until your wrists fell off, your back turned to Jell-O and your elbows burst into flames. That’s when you realized getting your knuckles whacked by a sadistic, ruler-wielding nun during penmanship exercises wasn’t so bad.

Nobody had a snow blower. Nobody. (Well, maybe the airport.) Back then, Home Depot didn’t exist. Nor did Lowe’s, or Sam’s Club or Harbor Freight or Costco or any other mass retailer of cheap Chinese garbage. Everything we bought was built in America, by a union workforce. That’s what made the American economy the strongest in the world. We built all the crap we bought and sold, right here.

You could buy a snow blower. But, to the best of my recollection, they were like, a million dollars. Even if you could find a Japanese model (you couldn’t, there was no demand,) it would set you back at least $750,000. That’s why nobody had one. Bear in mind, this is the recollection of an 11 year old. Its veracity is not guaranteed.

Snow in those days was shoveled. By men and boys. With shovels. No gasoline required. This gave Catholic families a leg up. They had enough boys to make short work of the worst snowstorm. Protestant boys got wagons and bikes and cap guns and shiny red sleds for Christmas. Catholic boys got snow shovels.

But it wasn’t so much a shovel as a cookie sheet riveted to a broom stick. The hardware store had heavy, tempered steel shovels with hickory handles. They would last years, but they were expensive. So nobody bought them. You bought the $4 model. A $4 piece of junk, unlikely to make it to the next snowstorm, made in America, by a union workforce. You think the Chinese pioneered making flimsy junk? Fat chance. They stole it. From us. Planned obsolescence was invented in post-war America.

A cookie sheet on a stick is absolutely perfect for that one-in-a-hundred storm that dusted your world with light, fluffy powder. The other 99, you got what you got. Snow, all night, followed by sleet, followed by freezing rain, followed by more snow, drifting into banks that brushed the second floor windows. By the time 6 a.m. came around (get your useless butt out of that bed, it’s time to start shoveling!) your driveway was a glacier. Six feet of ice, impenetrable by jackhammer.

I’d work two or three hours, clearing enough space for a bicycle. But my mom’s house is on a main artery. So the minute I stood back to admire my handiwork, the city snowplow would come by, at 75 mph. And in seconds, my six feet of ice was buried under another six feet of ice, in the form of boulders, the size of Volkswagens. I couldn’t see the plow driver, for the acrid cloud of diesel smoke his rig left behind. But I could hear him laughing. At me and my pathetic, $4 piece-of-crap snow shovel.

At that moment, the toughest, most arrogant, self-confident pre-teen would breathe in the fumes, hoping to die, before throwing his shovel skyward to dissolve into tears of rage. Don’t ask me how I know this.

So we shoveled. And shoveled. And shoveled. Until sunset. And nobody bought rock salt in those days, either. Be serious! Rock salt was like, a dollar a ton. Way too expensive. We didn’t need it. Rock salt was for those Protestants, zipping by on their shiny, new, candy-red Flexible Flyer sleds. Lazy bastards.

We were men. Italian, Catholic, men. With shovels. We didn’t need rock salt. We only needed to spend every second of every minute of that precious day off from school, scraping the pavement clean or every last flake of snow. Otherwise, it would turn into a skating rink overnight, lying in wait to send grandma flying ass over teacups the next day.

That was the situation, 30 years ago, the last time I spent any significant length of time shoveling my mom’s four-car drive and three-mile sidewalk (it’s a corner property.) Back then, I’d have preferred sticking needles in my eyes to shoveling snow. It screwed up your snow day. It was boring. It was cold. It was hard work. It was everything a pre-teen was born to resist.

December 2020 saw the first snowstorm since moving back to Mom’s. It brought it all back, in living color. You’d have thought it would have put a knot in my stomach. But 30 years is a long time. And a strange thing happened, sometime during those 30 years—I learned to like shoveling snow. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s still boring. And cold. And hard work. But I like it.

As a kid, I could never appreciate its greatest virtue; it’s mindless. It’s rote, repetitive, brain-free grunt work. No matter how hard your day is, what’s driving you crazy or what’s got your addled mind going into overdrive at 3 a.m., shoveling snow is simplicity. There’s a big pile of snow. It has to be moved. So you move it. Problem presented, problem solved.

Another thing happened during those 30 years. Wonderful, but strange. Women, shoveling snow. When I was a lad, you could drive from one end of Trenton to the other after a snowstorm and find exactly zero women shoveling snow. It just wasn’t done.

Things have changed. At more than one house in mom’s neighborhood, entire families were out with shovels and blowers and brooms—men, women, girls and boys. This is a very good thing. These new customs make it socially acceptable for Beth to help me shovel. My back, wrists and elbows are 30 years older, now. I really need her help.

Another bonus: Rose.

We figured we were on our own, this year. Mom’s neighbor, Robert, always did her walks with his snow blower. But Robert died last year, young, from cancer. We were about halfway through the drive, dreading the specter of the three-mile sidewalk—Mom’s is a corner property. That’s when Rose showed up, Robert’s widow. He’s gone, but Rose knows how to run his ginormous snow blower. She did the whole sidewalk in about 17 seconds.

This is the most profound thing about snow I couldn’t appreciate, as a boy. It brings the community together, with a common purpose.

There’s no snow blower in my future. When they work, they’re great. But it is virtually guaranteed to give you trouble. It will fail to start. It will break down. It will clog with snow. The scourge of ethanol gasoline will rot its innards. And even if you do get it started and keep it running, there’s a very good chance it will take your arm off.

I have nothing against snow blowers. I feel the same about them as I do about dogs; happy to play with somebody else’s, no interest in having one of my own. Give me the cheap shovel, sore back, screaming wrists and wrenched elbows. Call me old fashioned.

Part of it is self serving. I hate, hate, hate exercise. Like, given the choice between going to the gym and having root canal, I’d pick the latter, any day of the week. Shoveling snow is an amazing workout. And the more physical work I do, the more beer I can drink and Christmas cookies I can eat, without gaining weight.

I may have a heart attack in the process. It will be worth it.

=S

TO BE CONTINUED

Want to see the next chapter? Please subscribe. And thanks.

2020 move