A Snow Mystery

Another week, another snowstorm: they've been coming through pretty regularly this winter. Yesterday's snow was the heavier kind, and it turned to rain for a while in the afternoon before the temperature dropped again, but the later-day stuff was lighter and accumulated only about another half-inch.

Surprisingly, even though the snow was heavy it wasn't that difficult for me to deal with. The one area that's always a challenge is the bottom of the driveway. The plows come by in groups of three, each one riding a little closer to the edge of the street than the one in front of it, and we always end up with a substantial deposit of thick snow that needs to be excavated to free the car.

After I'd cleared our sidewalk, steps, and made a path to the back of the house, I was working my way through the bank of snow and was a little more than half done when I got a profound surprise. We have a neighbor who plows for a small business across the street, and clears the sidewalks in front of a couple of houses adjacent to the commercial building. I almost always see him when I'm outside shoveling, and he certainly sees me.

He hasn't been the most cooperative person as far as clearing the sidewalks in front of his own house, and on occasion he has left plowed snow in the middle of the street, maintaining that "the city plows will take care of it," which of course means it ends up getting plowed into our driveway after I've cleared it. (He also has a mean dog.)

Yesterday he passed by, then looped around to our side of the street, angled in, and ran his plow across the area I was working on, saving me another 15 minutes or so of effort. I waved and yelled my thanks, and he drove off.

We've lived here almost eight years, and this is the first time this has happened. There were times when I wished he would do what he did yesterday, and times when I considered flagging him down and offering him money to make a pass across the bottom of our driveway. I have no idea what may have motivated him to decide to help me out yesterday, but I'm appreciative of it just the same.

Of course I had to go out twice later in the day and night to clean up after subsequent passes by the city's plows, but those were relatively minor amounts.