Alice Coyle: Love thy neighbors with snow blowers

Winter got off to an early start dropping a foot of snow in my neighborhood Thursday afternoon giving my husband and 8-year-old son all they could handle shoveling our sizeable driveway.

Despite my warning that we were, according to the weather pundits only a quarter of the way through the storm, which arrived hours before those same pundits had predicted, my husband and son still ventured out to clear the sloping pavement enough to get my car down the driveway and into our garage.

Six more inches would fall and erase their labor but they were not thwarted by that inevitability. They were going to keep ahead of the storm and make later shoveling duties less demanding by lightening the snow load, somewhat.

When our neighbors across the street fired up their snow blower, my husband raised his head and lowered his shovel hoping that his exertions would soon come to an end. Surely after taking care of his own, much smaller driveway, our neighbor would do the neighborly thing and offer to help clear ours.

Or not.

We're new to the neighborhood and after moving in to our new house in August we couldn't help but notice that none of the neighbors popped in to welcome us with a Bundt cake. In fact, we learned from one man who lives down the street that the folks across the street weren't too happy that our "big new house" was being built. So needless to say we weren't too surprised when the offer to blow the snow off our driveway didn't come.

We awoke the next morning to another half foot of snow on the driveway, which I helped my husband clear so I could get my car out of the garage and back up the driveway and take my son to school.

We got down to blacktop in about an hour, but the weather pundits were predicting another storm later in the weekend so we knew our sore backs had not yet begun to ache.

It was about this time that we began to talk about the prospect of buying a snow blower. I wasn't even sure how much they cost, but the cost of shoveling on our back and shoulders and necks was high.

"You realize of course," I told my husband, "that if we buy a snow blower, it will never snow again."

We agreed that was a risk worth taking, but with Christmas just a week or so away, we'd have to put off any major capital expenses until the first quarter of 2008.

The second storm started as snow but changed over to sleet, freezing rain and then just regular rain. Layered on top of several more inches of the white stuff, shoveling snow was more like shoveling cement, or so I was told. I wasn't actually out there being pelted with ice pellets and breaking my back. But my husband was, and he didn't look happy.

I would have been content to wait and see if the rain and warming temperatures would take care of the snow, but the weather pundits were telling a different story. Something about plummeting temperatures and gusting northwest winds that would turn the driveway slush into a skating rink and the plowed piles to rock hard walls of ice.

So soaked to the skin and straining every muscle in his body, my husband dug in and began to shovel out. He wasn't getting very far when he said the most wonderful thing happened. Our neighbor with the snow blower appeared and said he'd help clear the rest of our driveway. He explained, to our chagrin that his snow blower had quit on him after the first storm and he was sorry he couldn't help us out then.

After making some repairs he was clearing snow and slush at a breakneck pace leaving my husband with little to do but thank our neighbor profusely while scraping the ice pellets out of his beard.

As for me, I'm baking him a Bundt cake.

<span style="font-size: 10pt;">Alice Coyle is the managing editor of Community Newspaper Company's Raynham office. She can be reached at acoyle@cnc.com.</span>