The Village Idiot: Take this snow and shovel it
Scientists say every snowflake that falls is unique. That’s true. What they don’t tell you is that every pile of frozen dirty slush looks exactly the same.
There’s a reason that “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” became the best-selling record of all time while “I’m Dreaming of a White St. Patrick’s Day” was never even written. There’s something about snow in December that’s romantic and fluffy, pure and good. But there’s something about snow two months later that is boring and tedious, ugly and foul.
How many times have we just finished shoveling the drive way when the snowplow comes by and makes a 2-foot-tall wall of packed snow and ice across the entrance that we have to hack out before we can leave? The first time it was ironic. The second time it was frustrating. The third time it was maddening. Now we’re up to incensed.
Sue does the driving whenever we’re in the car together. But that’s another column. A long, bitter, unfunny column. Anyway, that always leaves me on the passenger side. During winter, every time she parks she steps out into a nicely plowed street while I step into a snowdrift. That’s if I’m lucky. That’s if I can get the car door open at all. Sometimes, it’s just a frozen and refrozen wall of dirt and rock-hard snow between the car and shoveled part of the sidewalk. It’s easier to roll down the window and crawl out.
So as I struggle to get out of the car, the back of my pants always hits the door frame about mid-calf leaving a muddy streak across the back of my pants. My soaking-wet-up-to-my-knees pants.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. At the moment we’re still on the road and I’m dreaming we had brought another gallon of windshield wiper fluid with us. Can you sing a few bars of that, der Bingle? The stuff we’ve been using can’t last much longer. The truck we’ve been following for the last 20 miles is a perfectly designed sludge-making machine. No matter how far back we are, no matter what speed we go, the truck driver seems to be able to match it exactly and direct hundreds of gallons of semi-frozen grit at us.
It was only two and a half months ago that we had our first significant snow fall. After the first snow of the season everyone seems to be enchanted, for a day or two we live in a fairy village where everyone is smiling and cheery.
“Oh, isn’t it delightful?” says Wilma the cashier down at the Gas and Go Away. “What’s a little snow?”
Yesterday, she was singing a different tune.
“Not again! Is spring ever gonna come? I got a letter from the Pierces the other day. It was 80 degrees down in Boca. Marvin said it was too hot to golf so they just sat around the pool. Why did I stay here? Each winter I say I’m going to move but I never do. What’s wrong with us? Why do we stay here?”
“Because if we had wonderful weather here all year round, everybody’d want to live here. Then we couldn’t afford it.”
“Let’s see, I’m snowed in and I’m poor. If you’re just trying to cheer me up, stop it.”
Jim Mullen contributes regularly to Entertainment Weekly, where he can be reached at jim_mullen@ew.com.