Minnewaska Musings

by Paul Gremmels

“I’ve had about enough.” I mumbled to myself one recent morning while looking out the kitchen window at the monstrous snow drifts being added to by yet more wind and snow. Let’s face it, it’s been a long winter.

When I used to deliver packages for a living, I got a good look at people’s driveways, garage aprons and sidewalks. Or more specifically, their method or technique of snow removal throughout the winter season. If it was a long winter, the snow removal would always follow the same inevitable pattern. At the beginning of the season, the snowblower, plow and shovel lines are neat and clean. All ice is chipped away and even the snow piles have a perfect symmetry. But as the winter persists, the lines begin to waiver. The snow piles start to show deformities and there are narrower sidewalks, driveways and turnarounds. There are patches of ice here and there that haven’t been chipped away. And by the end of the winter, there are just two shovel lines out of the garage for the car. If the driveway has been plowed it is just one swat up and back. The sidewalks are simply tromped down snow. It will melt in the spring.

Case in point: On that morning of looking out my kitchen window and lamenting, I was once again shoveling a path to our detached garage. I was using a shovel that I’ve had for several years. It’s a good shovel. Plastic yes, but good. The shaft is the perfect diameter for my hands and the shovel itself is not overly large or curved too much. On the end of the shaft is a triangular handle that if needed, I can put both hands into and really get to scraping. I was grudgingly pushing the shovel ahead with that handle into the four inches of new snow and throwing it off to my left side. At the peak of one throw, the triangular handle came off in my right hand as the shaft slipped from my left hand, the shovel arced into the winter air, doing a beautiful half gainer, landing perfectly upright in the yard, just beyond the snow berm. If that shovel had arms, it would have lifted them above its head like an Olympic gymnast. I stood there for a moment, in the moonlit quiet of the post-snow morning, just staring at that shovel.

“Ten!” I shouted out loud. “Eight, from the Russian judge.”

I then trudged, shovel-less, through the un-shoveled snow of the walkway, and backed my truck out of the garage onto the un-shoveled apron.       

So, as the winter grinds on, it wears down even the hardiest of us. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. We’ve done the best we could. Spring will indeed come and when it does, I’ll walk across the yard and pick up that shovel, reattach the handle and store it away for next year. Maybe hang it on the garage wall in a place of honor. Give it a little wink and a nod on one of those ninety degree August days.

–Paul Gremmels is a freelance writer, essayist and a columnist. He lives with his wife, Ann, in rural Pope County.  His column is published in the Pope County Tribune on the last week of each month.  He welcomes and responds to all correspondence. He can be contacted at:
gremmels@runestone.net