Friday Guest Mock: Winter Sucks

This installment of our award-deserving Friday Guest Mock series is another gem from our pal Caveboy.  Enjoy!

I wrote this a few years ago prior to the acquisition of a motorized snow removal device.  Which by the way will not only move snow from one location to another in a very efficient manner, but will also hurl a golf ball sized rock 40 feet through a six foot picture window.

Winter Sucks

Another great discovery was made this weekend at the castle laboratory; winter would probably be my favorite season of the year if it wasn’t for all the snow and cold weather because shoveling snow in 10 degree weather sucks.

Having grown up in the south, where snow is a magical thing that gets you out of school every time it falls, regardless of the amount, shoveling this crap just really blows.

In the South you either one, drive on it till it’s packed down, or two, stay home cause the roads are bad, and nobody makes fun of you.  The main rationale behind this is the fact that the snow will be melted away within 24 – 48 hours of its’ arrival, regardless of the amount deposited by mother nature.  I have literally seen 10 inches of snow on Monday and played golf on Thursday

Not so in the great white north.  No, when that first snow falls that conceals the ground you rush outside brush that first dusting (read 10 inches) away, tell the grass and dirt “I’ll see you in April, maybe May, I’ll miss you.”  Having an effective method for snow removal is a necessity not a luxury.  Unless of course you are a big fan of ambulance rides and heart attacks.

When we lived in Iowa we didn’t get much snow and what we did get was plowed by our neighbor who kept cattle in a barn behind our rented farmhouse.  It wasn’t that he was being neighborly by any stretch.  It was that our driveway was the only road to the barn, which he had to get to, to feed his cattle.

Then when we moved to Michigan snow removal was included in the rent of the apartment that we rented for two years.  Then we bought a house and I thought about the snow situation, but the driveway was only about 40 feet long and I thought “How long could it take to shovel?”  About 4-1/2 fucking hours that’s how long.  Well it actually it would have taken longer, but after 4-1/2 hours I said screw it and started drinking beer.

Then I tried the driving on it in the driveway, till it got about a foot thick.  By then it was slicker than snot on a door knob and extremely treacherous.  Also, by this time all the water has been squeezed out of it and it was harder than granite, and required much effort to remove.

Then to top it off, I get a nastygram from the mail carrier, on pink paper to make it seem like a friendly reminder, stating that if I don’t remove the snow from in front of my mail box, delivery will cease until the situation is remedied.  They even included a diagram as to where to clear the snow.  Conspicuously absent was a note as to what day and time they would be by to help me clear said path and I did have to go to the post office to retrieve my mail for several days until I remedied the sicheeayshun.

The mail carriers oath reads, and I quote “We are mothers and fathers and sons and daughters. Who every day go about our lives with duty, honor and pride. And neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, nor the winds of change, nor a nation challenged, will stay us from the swift completion of our appointed rounds. Ever”.  This was copied verbatim from the United States Postal Service Website.

No where in this most hallowed oath does it quantify the amount of snow.  If included in the oath was a caveat of something akin to, “When the snow is over the tops of our orthopedic shoes ain’t nobody getting no mail” then I’d be OK with the aforementioned warning, but it does not.  I think I have grounds for a breach of contract suit, and if you consider I was probably not the only recipient of the infamous pink paper warning, this could explode into a class action type litigation.  Then again probably not, I’ll just shovel the snow like the good little lemming I am, so my mail box can continue to be stuffed full of every sale paper, sweepstakes entries, and other correspondence relating to national security.

By the way my newspaper box is right beside my mail box and they never missed a day of delivery or threatened me with service interruption and I guarantee  you that the folks that deliver my newspaper make a damn sight less than those that deliver my mail.

Remember,  Nuthins free so send money.

caveboy out

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