If the predictions are true we are about to get POUNDED with a crazy nor’easter. With all the recent talk of faked global warming data it is easy to forget that there really just doesn’t seem to be as much snow during the winter as there was when I was just a young lad. Back then the neighborhood kids would wake up early in a competition to see who could be the first out making money shoveling snow. Many a blustery morning  in the late 70’s – early 80’s my brother and me would head out  at first light after a storm, vying to be the ones to service the choicest of long driveways. We would trod up to the doors of our sometimes still sleeping neighbors in and effort to earn a little loot which we would most likely blow later at the video game parlor. (Yes, as unbelievable as it seems, there was a time when you actually had to leave the house to play video games AND they were played on *gasp* a stand-alone machine, but I digress.) Those days we would work as fast as we could, systematically moving from one house to another in hopes of expanding our pockets just a little more. We worked until are hands and feet were almost frostbitten, head back for 30 minute of hot chocolate and heat and then back out again until the early waning of the winter light when our bodies ached from a job well done. I remember back then thinking that these folk were lucky and that one day, god willing, I would be in my house and have industrious kids knocking on my door full of piss and vinegar ready to make a buck for a hard days work.

Now that I have that house, when it snows I wait for the knock.  The knock that says, “Hey Mister I’m here and I am ready to work, I’ll do a bang up job for you, so please sir won’t you let me make a buck”?  It is the knock that would complete the circle of life, the knock of tradition, continuity, the knock of faith. But alas it is the knock never comes. One time a kid from 2 doors down stopped over half heartily offering to shovel but performed in the same half-hearted manner, eyes darting side to side knowingly when sticking his hand out to collect his quarry,  embarrassed  to be leaving me to clean up his unfinished shoveling. Back in the day sidewalks were cleared side to side, not some pathetic single shovel path down the center.  I later learned that the motive was not one of that of pulling ones self up by the bootstraps but rather that of a teen who need some dough for a party he was headed to later that evening. That didn’t  bother me half as much as if he would have just taken some pride in his work. Who am I to judge what he was going to do with his hard-earned cabbage. One kids video game parlor is another kids keg party…but still.

I fear I am quickly becoming like that grumpy old curmudgeon Andy Rooney lamenting the passing of newspapers. Perhaps it was the proliferation of the snow blower or the various landscape crews on contract that will come plow the drive and clear the walk or maybe today’s kids have it easy but what ever the case it seems the fire is gone. Know this though I will still be here, be here waiting for the knock, the knock that may never comes with cash in hand ready, ready for the kid whose looking to pay his way by seizing the opportunity mother nature presents him or her, the kid looking to earn his keep. As I put the finishing touches on this post the NBC 4 had the most telling quote, “As PARENTS worry about the snow shoveling in their future, kids are just happy to see some flakes of the white stuff”

We would like to know your story do you have neighborhood kids who come by offering to shovel? Post a comment and let us know.

{ 2 comments }