If you’re new to Shorewood, you don’t know how good we used to have it. She was a nurturer and nothing proved it more than the way her arms would wrap around us on the day of a big storm. She patted our heads as if to say, “Don’t worry about shoveling, sweetie, I’ll take care of it.” And she did.
One minute you couldn’t tell where the sidewalks were, the next minute they were clear down to their mother breaking cracks. Block after block of ninety-degree angled virgin snow edging, right up to the grass. It was a beautiful sight. We got the red carpet treatment and felt special to live here. More importantly, we had something that everyone else wanted.
I’m not sure what happened, but if we voted on this I’d bet my shovel that the ballot box was full of responses from non-arthritic people under 50 and over 5’0” with snow blowers, kids out of diapers or the formerly proud owners of SUVs equipped with front-side intimidation plows. My brother used to have one and got absolutely giddy every time snow started to accumulate. He took great pleasure in patrolling the streets just looking for people who needed help with clearing snow. He’d even help people who didn’t want help! I haven’t run into that yet, but it‘s still February.
So if we have to clear our own walks lets set some ground rules:
If you don’t have time or don’t feel like it, you don’t have to shovel.
Making a path just the width of your shovel counts as shoveling.
If the village plows the end of a just shoveled driveway, the home owner should be able to call the police non-emergency number and see if any public servant will take their snow back. If no one is available, the snow shoveling ordinance is waived.
If you don’t have room in your garage for a snow plow, it’s your neighbor’s responsibility to shovel your walk.
or a least,
Make it legal for us to throw the darn stuff back into the road and don’t admonish us. Have a heart.
After all, we’ve lost our mother…
