The last few weeks have been filled with snow. Every three or four days we get a dump of snow, enough to pull out the technology and blow it away. Between my two neighbours, John and Bob, we really don’t have any place to put the stuff.
Bob and I share a driveway, so we take all the snow from his side and my side and toss it over to my side of the equation. Then we toss it up and over into a traditional snow bank that many of you know as a child. Except my front lawn is only 7 feet wide and there is a big tree in the middle of it. So, we toss the snow into John’s driveway, clean John’s driveway out and toss all the snow up and over onto John’s lawn. Three driveways and walkways full of snow, all wind up on John’s lawn.
Then the snowplough comes by. John, by being on the corner, gets some mono-browed Human Amoeba with a huge grader to fill the end of his driveway with six feet of ploughed, hard-packed road snow in the name of clearing the streets. So, we dig that out and toss it up onto the pile. Oh and we clean out the end of my driveway and Bob’s too.
Considering that the snow technology (the snow blower) is an overpowered 8 hp monster, this hasn’t been an issue in many previous years. This year, it is an issue. We can’t actually toss the snow high enough to clear the existing snow banks and get the damn stuff to hell out of our way. And you can’t throw it back in the street either, as that is ‘against the law’.
We now have three, very tall, as in six feet high, piles of hard packed snow. In my childhood in the Pleistocene Era we had a few winters that created these huge snow piles. Being industrious juvenile delinquents, we decided to create snow forts, by burrowing down into these piles and clearing out domed rooms.
One winter we were able to tunnel from one end of the driveway to the other in the snow banks, creating two hidden snow forts in the heart of the snow banks with an invisible tunnel connecting the two. We did this, essentially, because we were idiots and had watched “The Great Escape” on TV one too many times.
With all this snow, I’m looking longingly at these huge snow piles and thinking to myself. Unfortunately I am a technically grown man and it would be unseemly. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to construct one last huge, hidden warren of snow tunnels and forts through all the snow banks. File this under keeping the inner child alive.
RoadDave 