The Winter of My Content

Last week the coastal storm here in Connecticut matched the 24-hourly total of the Blizzard of 1888, (although not its total snowfall). For an old guy with a problem, I shoveled a lot of snow. Sig, especially, understands. Snowblowers are ineffective in high wind. Garden-tractor plows are useless in places with angles and grades. Shoveling is the only way, but you still have that big problem of great snowfalls: where to put the snow when you run out of places for it, and the snow mountains are so high, you can’t toss your shovel-full over the pile to the far side.

The best solution to this problem is to dispatch a little boy to the top of the mound (he's less apt to sink, than an adult) with his starter shovel and have him lower the summit by skimming and shovelling the snow to the far side.

Because chimney-sweeping with a kid on the end of a rope is illegal now, the only useful winter employment for a youngster is snow-removal. Sledding is unproductive, and teaches nothing.

The last time I had little boys to press into this arduous, but eduational, task, was during the ferocious winter of 93-94, and as adolescents in the raging winter of 96-97. By the time of the blizzards of 2006, they had left home, but I don't hold that against them. Now they're settled in life, and all of them are combat veterans.

I take responsibility for the last credential. Maybe I just pissed them off, or the snow shoveling hardened them for jumping out of airplanes, Rangering and SF-ing in Iraq and Afghanistan. You don’t have to thank me. They don’t; not yet. Blowing snow, steel-gray skies, and wind like razors is better than water and heat for tempering a boy. I only ordered them outside and gave them something to do.

Having no little boys now, I lowered the mounds myself, and went inside for coffee, to loop Collective Soul’s She Said, and to finish Paul Theroux’s ‘95 book "The Pillars of Hercules". Off the subject of snow for a moment, the book is about Theroux’s foot and boat journey around the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to Morocco.

Theroux is mildly liberal, but he’s no fantasist, especially about Europe, the ghastly Mediterreanean "states" and the decay of Middle East. He’s a realist, like we are at Nickie's. Today I feel really good, with an overdose of smug. When you do something hard and read something good; listen to good music, and miss your kids - and can tell someone about it - you love life and love America. God blessed America, and me. I hope your week was as good as mine.