While we Up North need to just “get over it” regarding snow, it is March 10, 2009 and we’re getting tired of it. Besides, no travel, no pay, so the storm is reducing my standard of living. Wonder if there’s an earmark in the stimulus package for me and my fellow landmen who lose income due to blizzards. But I digress.
Last summer when I put house on the market, I made a deal with Shane, my next-door neighbor to the south. His ancient snowblower had given up the ghost last winter and was consigned to the scrapheap. So, whenever it snowed, he would head over to my house to borrow my shiny red electric-start mid-sized machine, clear his driveway and mine, and return my snowblower to its rightful place in my garage.
Today’s modern walk-behind snowblowers are adapted from the first snow throwers used in the late 1800s by railroads to quickly and safely clear tracks in Canada and our snow belt. Another large model was first employed by cities in the 1920s to clear streets. And Toro, of lawnmower fame, introduced its homeowner snowblower in 1952, much to the relief of many backs. Except mine. My old man refused to buy one, preferring instead to have us “get some exercise” shoveling our long, steep driveway.
Anyway, fast forward to me putting my house on the market late last summer. On a hot August afternoon, feeling generous and wanting to thank Shane for being a good friend and neighbor, I pushed my snowblower over to his garage when I saw him futzing with his racing bicycle. I gave him the machine with one condition: That he would agree to clear my driveway every time it snowed until I sold my house. He happily agreed, and parked his new used snowblower in his garage. Good deal for us both. He gets a functioning snowblower; I get my driveway cleared out a couple of times. Or so we thought.
In late September 2008, I accepted the opportunity to work for a couple of weeks as a right-of-way agent in eastern South Dakota, much closer to Fargo than North Dakota’s oil patch. Weeks turn into a month and then another assignment comes up closer still. I take my house off the market. Fall turns to winter, it snows, Shane blows, and I come home every Friday to a clear driveway.
Now it’s March 2009, it’s snowing like all get out, and as I peer out at my snow-packed driveway, I know that it will be cleared out by the guy who made the world’s worst snowblower deal ever.
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