My kingdom for a shoveler

I'm not ready! This is what I said a couple of days ago (Friday, Nov. 6th) when I woke up to snow on the ground. The day before had been bad enough, when there were snow flurries as I was leaving for work. I made a squawking sound when I saw those. And they recurred off and on throughout the day, though there wasn't much sticking. But overnight the dang stuff stuck, and there was at least an inch standing up along the railing of my back deck, when I looked out my kitchen window Friday morning.

I really do like snow, but unfortunately snow means shoveling; for this lady who is no longer young, a back-breaking proposition. And I don't just have to shovel a path from my door to the car, and then shovel away what both nature and the snowplows have deposited behind my car, all too often I have to shovel the walks at the library, too. Officially we have someone to keep the walks clear, but last year he did a lousy job. What he would most often do was come very early in the morning, and use his snowplow. But there would still be a layer of snow -- it takes a shovel to get down to the concrete. He might put down some ice-melt, but that needs to be shoveled away within a half hour or so, or the softened snow just freezes again. And if it continued to snow, by the time we opened, at either 10 a.m. (Monday & Wednesday), or 2 p.m. (Tuesday, Thursday & Friday) there would be additional snow that I would have to go out and shovel away. And yes, of course, I talked to Jeff about this, more than once. When I told him that what was important was that the walks be genuinely clear at the time we opened, he insisted that he had to come earlier, if it was a heavy snowfall, or his plow couldn't cut through the accumulated snow. "Then you need to come back later, to do a follow-up," I said. And a few times he did come back -- for an additional charge -- but even then he wouldn't be out there applying the necessary muscle power; he would just make another swipe with his damn machine.

Get somebody else, I hear someone say? This is my third snow clearer in four years. The first one I contracted with did a good job when he showed up, but he was totally unreliable about showing up. He always had excuses. I got tired of the whining, and the fact that I was having to do so much shoveling, an omen of things to come, Had I But Known. The fellow I found the next year started out so gung-ho -- he and his men were out there with shovels, after using the snowplow -- but by midway through the winter it was the same old song. And when I called him for the following year -- despite my misgivings -- he seemed to have gone out of business; I got no call-back.

You would think people dedicated to clearing walks of snow would be thick on the ground in Maine, but you would be wrong. Guys with snowplows on the front of their trucks, eager to clear parking lots, people's driveways, private roads, they're pretty easy to find. But guys who will get out and swing a shovel, no indeed. And even the snowplow guys are, as all of the above indicates, not terribly reliable. As far as my personal situation goes, I have thought of putting up a notice at the Gardiner library, saying "Snow shoveler wanted, weekdays that it snows (M&W, snow cleared by 9 a.m., T,Th&F, by 10:30). Note that this is not a job for a snowplow; the space has to be shoveled." I don't know that the library bulletin board is the best place to find such an animal, if such an animal exists. It couldn't be a kid because they are all off for school by 7 o'clock. An out-of-work Joe Blow with a strong back?

I think I'll try it. Heck, maybe I should try it for the library...