Flashes of Panic

Speaking of mild Pennsylvania winters reminded me of the less-mild winter we had somewhat later in my time there. I was sharing a duplex with Z at the time, and naturally we were responsible for shoveling our back walk to the cars, the front steps, and the sidewalk in front of the house. We were not technically responsible for shoveling the alley between us and our neighbors to the east, but since they were both retirees—the wife worked for Rodale when its primary business was electrical switches—we shoveled the alley and their sidewalk as well, unless one of their adult children managed to beat us to it.

The back walks were not much of an issue, but the sidewalks posed a storage problem. We couldn’t shovel the snow into the street—the snowbanks there were a problem by themselves—so our yards were the only realistic snow repository. These “yards” could be mowed in less than three minutes with a reel mower, and ours had two enormous shrubs encroaching from the porch side. It was not long into the winter when the mountain of snow in our front yard, containing the snow from an area roughly twice its own (and yes, we shoveled the neighbors’ sidewalk onto their lawn, not ours) obscured the view from our front window.

The view not being much to cheer about, this wasn’t much of a problem, but we had other issues. The biggest one was that the snow pile was so large, about half of any shovelful thrown up on it would simply avalanche back down onto the sidewalk. We started pushing all the snow in the alley back into a similar mountain at the head of our back yard, which expanded to the point that it didn’t finish melting until well into April.

The heap immediately to the west of the end of our Amherst driveway is looking much like that now, even after last week’s melting spree. It’s as tall as I am, if not taller, and yet I must throw a significant fraction of the snow from the driveway up on it. I try to pitch the snow over the peak and in behind the pile, but some of that is starting to roll back out into the street. The problem is similar to the one we had in Emmaus: when the snow goes to a relatively small area, it doesn’t take a very big storm to lead to a big snow pile.

Yesterday and today, I also went across the street and shoveled out our neighbor’s sidewalk. She’s not home, I think, but when the big storms came through earlier this month she didn’t really shovel, and the sidewalk got pretty bad. I figured someone had to do it. I spotted a roving band of kids with shovels this afternoon, though, and I’m wondering if I can pre-pay them to shovel her out for the rest of the winter.

Now Playing: Columbus from Heyday by The Church

Technorati Tags: shoveling, snow