The Perfect Song Blog

The 16 inches of snow that plopped itself down over the course of 24-hours, brought everything to a standstill. We have a 300-foot driveway that leads up to the two-lane road at about a 30 degree slope.
We also have a garden tractor with a plow that lay buried and emanating weak signals saying: “Don’t even try me. I won’t plow until you shovel.” I hate it when tractors communicate, especially when they tell you what they’re not going to do.
I called several places that advertise snow plowing. I found no amount of money or promises would bring them here.
“I’ll give you a thousand dollars,” I said to one.
“I’m busy.”
“I’ll pay you twice your rates and give you an all-expense paid trip to the Bahamas where barely dressed beautiful girls over 18 will play interactive video games with you,” I told another.
“Forget it,” the guy said. “I’ve had a better offer.”
The last one was honest with me. “Nobody will plow your driveway,” he said. “It’s too long and steep. There’s no place to push the snow up there in the woods. A snow blower will get stuck. The only thing you can do is hand shovel it.”
“I used to do that,” I said. “There’s too much snow. I’m too old.”
There was a pause on the line. “Don’t have a heart attack,” he said quietly. “There’s not an ambulance in the county that will pick you up.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You’ll just lay there and the way it’s snowing, you’ll be buried in an hour. If the heart attack doesn’t kill you, you’ll freeze to death. The wind chill is 15 below zero. When it’s that low, even if you don’t die, they’ll have to amputate a lot of extremities. So shovel at a safe pace.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
Leigh and I went out and shoveled. We discovered that Tristan, the Aussie puppy, loves to leap at the snow when we throw it. So we all had a snow shoveling party for six hours. Nathan braved the closed roads and came up to help for a couple hours. By 6 p.m. we had an 8-foot wide path dug
I dug out our tractor with the plow. “Think you can do it now?” I asked.
I could feel it shrug as if to say, “I’m not real enthusiastic but I guess that’s what I’m here for.”
By 7 p.m. we had enough snow shoveled and plowed to get the cars out. I came in and had a drink to help stave off heart attack and tried to get the words to Winter Wonderland out of my head.