Flashes of Panic

Having lived my entire life in the Northeast, I’ve developed an appreciation for snow removal done badly. I’ll leave out snowplows and the D.C. area for now; today, I’m thinking shovels.

When I was not quite full-grown, I judged shovels by how well I could lift the shovels themselves. This predisposed me against, for example, my father’s coal shovel, and towards the sort of flat, wide-scooped plastic shovels which are better for plowing than real shoveling.

Once I got older, I preferred brute-force shovels, the ones with really deep scoops that would let me pick up a huge volume of snow and pitch it into the middle of the lawn. (Not always much of a pitch; in Pennsylvania, our front lawn was slightly smaller than a king-sized mattress, and one winter we had real trouble finding enough space on it to store all the snow.)

I feel like I’ve reached more of a connoisseur position now. I want the right shovel for the job. The wide, flat-scooped shovels are great for fluffy or not-deep snowfalls. They can be useful for wet snow, but only because the flat edge can be used to cut the snow down to something manageable before scooping. The brute-force shovels are great for causing heart attacks.

And on a day like today, when we’re figuring out what to do with three or four inches of fluff which then soaked up a lot of rain and froze? When I keep seeing people with flimsy plastic or thin-metal scoops chipping at an inch or two of crust on their front walks? Today, I’m thinking about Dad’s coal shovel.

Now Playing: Born of Frustration from Seven by James