I’ve been shoveling snow every winter since I can remember, except for the years I lived in California. In seventh and eighth grades, in my snowy hometown of Buffalo, I shoveled our narrow driveway and front walk, and then I shoveled the driveway for my elderly next-door neighbors, at fifty cents a pop. During Buffalo’s snowy winters, that kind of income added up.
When my family moved to a bigger house with a much longer driveway, I shoveled that one too, along with the sidewalk. My siblings were part of the crew, but I remember a lot of hours out there on my own. I actually liked the work: the physical labor, the cold air, building up banks of shoveled snow. I could push, scoop, chop—I became a snow displacement expert.
For the past thirty years in Delmar, I’ve been shoveling my own driveway: double wide, about eighty feet long. For too many of those years, the driveway was gravel, making shoveling a tricky and delicate task. Too much pressure and you’re flinging stones. Too little and you leave too much snow behind. Finally, we had the driveway paved five years ago.
Harriet helps, and so did the kids as they got old enough, but I hold the position of CEO of snow shoveling. I was the one who decided if there was enough snowfall to require shoveling, what shoveling pattern was most efficient, where to pile the snow, whether to wait until the snow was finished falling or to shovel twice to ease the burden of a massive accumulation.
We’ve had several thirty-inch storms since I’ve lived here. I’ve shoveled light fluffy snow, heavy wet snow. I’ve shoveled inches of sleet. As the years passed, the work has become harder, my back and shoulders ache more. I need more frequent breaks. You hear all the time about the guy who has a heart attack while shoveling snow. I don’t think that’s going to happen to me, because it’s usually an otherwise sedentary person or someone with other serious health issues that goes down—but it could happen to me. I say it’s not the worst way to go, just as I say dropping dead on the tennis court wouldn’t be the worst way to go.
But now my entire snow-shoveling persona has been compromised. My friend Mark moved out of his house and into an apartment, and he bequeathed me his snowblower. I likely never would have purchased one on my own. I didn’t believe in snowblowers—I believed in the physical labor of shoveling. But a gift is a gift, and getting older is getting older.
I had the machine tuned up. I filled it with fresh gas. I stored it in my garage. All along, I’m thinking I don’t really want to use it because I’d been known for making smart-ass jokes such as “snowblowers are for sissies.”
Ah, “We mock the things we are to be.” So says someone I live with.
We got a seven-inch snowfall. I wheeled out my snowblower for its maiden voyage. It started up eagerly. Oh, it’s noisy all right. I settled myself at the controls. And just like that—zip, zip, zip, blow the snow left, blow it right, blow it forward—I’m up and down the driveway. Harriet also took a turn behind the wheel, with almost balletic grace. The work was so effortless and quick that I did my next-door neighbor’s driveway and my neighbor’s across the street (no fifty-cent fee involved)—all in much less time than it would have taken to hand shovel our own driveway.
I’ve officially joined the ranks of snowblower users. I’m not proud but am accepting of my fate.
And just the other night, we had another snowfall. It was only an inch or so—enough that I had to clear it but not enough to fire up the machine. I went out at night, under the bare trees and the pinpoint stars. The wind picked up and the chimes sang. The only other sound was my shovel gently cleaning up the driveway.
