Of Snow. . . and Shovelling Sidewalks

Whereas I've got some time on my hand, I was thinking about things I've done over the years and thought I might post another blog to be added to my (small) random collection of entries.

Years ago, I believe it may have been in 1998 or 1999 when I first moved to Greeley, my roommates and I had the responsibility of shovelling the sidewalks around our fairly large 3 bedroom house that we rented whenever the snow fell, or risk a small fine by the city. (The city isn't very good about enforcing the ordinance that requires residents to shovel their walks within 24 hours of a snowfall event, but they generally will give a household notice if a neighbor or someone else complains. At least, that seems to be my experience.) This would not normally be exciting enough to justify a blog entry, it just happens to be on my mind right now.

Not that I would sit watching my neighbors do it, but over the course of a couple of years I noticed that my neighbors when they would shovel their walks would watch their property line, with almost laser-like acuity, and as soon as they reached THE limit of they property, they would stop shovelling and either go the other direction to finish or return inside if they were finished. (Most people probably would not even give this a second thought, but I happened to grow up in one of the largest houses in the surrounding three counties on 3 1/2 acres of land, so we never had neighbors for me/us to notice such things.) After so long shovelling our walks, eventually I changed how I looked at shovelling the sidewalk. Ours was a corner house where we had neighbors to the back of us to the east and neighbors to the south of us. Our sidewalk was considerably long, so shovelling it took a significant amount of time, and more so if it was a significantly large snow event.

On one such occasion, I had finished shovelling our sidewalk and decided it wouldn't be too much work to keep going and shovel the walk for my neighbors on the south side. They had a fairly short sidewalk and driveway, so in a few extra minutes I shoveled their walks as well. One time of shovelling their walks eventually turned into nearly a routine. I wouldn't do it every time, but sometimes I had enough time to do it without interfering with any plans I had, or just 'cause I felt like doing it.

Most of the time, this seemed to go unnoticed, or at least unacknowledged. There were, however, a few times that I was "caught" doing this.

After several times shovelling the sidewalks for my neighbors to the south, they eventually had seen me doing it and so one night, there came a knock at our door. My neighbors had come over and brought an apple pie (not homemade, but apple pie I was not about to complain about) and a fairly large tin container full of chocolates (also not something I was about to complain about).

One Christmas night, I had returned home from being with my family. All of my roommates were gone, and not having TV, movies to watch, or anything else to do, I went out to shovel the walks. (I'm pretty sure at least that it was Christmas night, as I'm sure at least some of my roommates would have been home otherwise.) It had been a particularly heavy snowfall, I think of 8-10 inches or so, so it took quite a while to finish. Still not having anything to do though, I kept going. After shoveling the walks for my house and those of my neighbors to the south, I decided to keep going and shovel the walk for the other neighbors to the east (to the back of our house).

Still not content, I continued to the house where some friends were living about a block away. While shoveling their walk, their landlord came out (as I remember it anyways) and we chatted briefly. I continued on to his house and did only part of it, mostly because he had a VERY large driveway that I did NOT want to shovel.

On I continued after those two sidewalks and went to shovel the walks at one other house. A house so kindly nicknamed "the Spade house" for the plethora of spade shapes cut out of wood panels that were on each side of every window on the house. In this house lived a gaggle of girls that I figured were away also for Christmas and I figured they might like it to return and find the walks all shoveled. (That it was a gaggle of cute girls may have been some of the motivation for me picking that house, but it wasn't the entire reason. That just seemed the next logical place for me to go.)

When I got to the "Spade house", all was vacant (or so I thought but later found out otherwise, which I'll get to). I began to shovel the walk. The walks at this house can be very treacherous as there is a sidewalk that parallels the street and from that sidewalk another walk runs from the street, up a couple of steps, then up to the front porch and front door. I shovelled the walk and went on my way. A week or two later, I was at church when one of the gaggle of girls approached me and said, "Ben, I just want to let you know that I (or maybe she said 'we') appreciate your 'secret Santa' acts of service", and proceeded to tell me that she had been sitting at home all by herself and apparently got TOTALLY FREAKED OUT when she heard the scraping sounds coming from outside. She told of how she just stayed inside, maybe nearly fearing for her life, until she got the nerve to peak out a window and see my face. I trust that after that she calmed down a little bit, but don't remember what else she said.

By the time I finished the walks at the Spade house, I had finally had enough of shovelling walks for the night. I returned home and the rest of what I did was probably as insignificant as anything I ever do, maybe watched a movie or something. (We had a TV but didn't have cable or anything so if we were going to watch anything it would usually be one of what few movies any of us owned.)

(If anyone reading this wants to steal the idea of shoveling someone else's sidewalk at random, feel free. I know that pretty much anyone will appreciate it immensely.)

Years later, and now years ago, yet again I felt the inspiration to go shovel a sidewalk. At the time, I didn't own a snow shovel, partly because I was living in an apartment complex and the apartment manager was responsible for making arrangements to have the walks and stairs all cleared by hiring a service to do it, but also because my last shovel had fallen apart (it wasn't very well made).

After acquiring the necessary hardware, I proceeded to the house of Matt and Janet (they know who they are). I figured they would be home, so I made it my goal to work as quietly as possible so as to not wake them up (if they were asleep) and hopefully keep them from finding out. After not very long, I came to decide that being quiet was making the shoveling take too long. I gave up on the keeping quiet idea, or at least to some extent, until I got closer up the stairs to the front door. Two days later after church one Sunday, Matt came to me and said, "Ben, what were you doing Friday night?" Of course I knew what he was going to talk about but still tried to act like I didn't know. (To my knowledge they hadn't found out, but like before I found out otherwise.) Matt had been gone when I was there so it was just Janet home (I think by then a certain very adorable little girl had also just been born, which prevented them from leaving in the snowstorm to go to the ward party that we had, which party was also my excuse for what I was doing that Friday night, trying to create a semi-faux alibi). Anyways, after being forced to admit my guilt in my Friday-night escapade, Matt gave his thanks for what I had done.

I tell these stories, not to boast of my own doing. The experiences over the years of doing this have brought great satisfaction to me. In some cases it just felt good to do something nice for someone, but in other cases these experiences I look at as being great ice-breakers for the relationships that I went on to have with all of those friends. (Think FRIENDships, not serious bf/gf relationships; that is after all how I saw them.)

Again, if you feel so inspired to steal this idea to use for yourself (or actually FOR someone else but to do yourself), by all means go for it. That's what I have to say about that.