February 19th, 2010
Good shovelers make good neighbors…
I’ve never lived in a house until the one I’m in now and, let me tell you, living in the aftermath of a snowstorm is a lot simpler when you live in an apartment. I never gave much thought to shoveling all that snow when it was someone else’s job.
Now that it’s mine — not shoveling ALL of it, just my little sidewalk patch — I’ve become kind of obsessed with rock salt, the proper shovel and technique, and all my neighbors who are too dysfunctional to shovel at all.
In fact, I’ve learned that the condition of a neighbor’s front walk often mirrors their personality. That sheet of ice next door masquerading as a sidewalk? That belongs to my head-in-the-clouds neighbor who never really notices anything. She’s probably not aware that it’s snowed. I base this on the fact that she almost never recognizes me, even on the street where we’ve both lived for about 15 years now. I’ve become convinced that I could follow her inside her house and sit at her kitchen table before she’d notice that, you know, that I’m around.
That half-shoveled walk over there? Well, that’s the property of the local drug addict or rather his poor beleaguered mother who owns the brownstone. She’s too old to shovel and he’s too high. He can get very intense for a short amount of time, hence the half-scrubbed sidewalk. And when he’s not high, he spends all of his time changing and re-changing the oil in the latest in a long line of shitty line of cars he’s bought.
And then there’s that pristine walk over there where it looks like summer in February — not a drop of snow to be found. That’s the sidewalk of my rather large neighbor — whose street nickname is “The Giant” — who does not work. Still, it is a surprise his walk is so clean because he’s on a city disability for a bad back, or is it a bad attitude? I forget. But, considering his condition, he does a nice job.
Finally, there’s me. My attempts at shoveling are kind of half-ass. I usually get out early enough to tackle that first big snow off but then I go to work and by the time I come home, I’m too tired to shovel. So I throw rock salt everywhere — and I mean everywhere — borrowing the technique of the guy on the corner who feeds the pigeons. The rock salt thaws the ice until the morning when it’s frozen again, too frozen for me to shovel properly. By then, I’ve reverted to the mind set of an apartment dweller, figuring it’s someone else’s problem.
What can I say, except that I hope it gets warmer soon.