White Stuff

My old snow thrower is up in Maine, in his junior year.
My new snow player is, well rarin’ to go: go out and play that is.
My Boro Snowblower is not too good in snow more than six inches deep, so I usually take it out two or three times during a big snow. When family from down south call and ask how much snow we got, I multiply the total snow fall by the number of times I had to go out.
We had 343 inches last year, really!
The guy across the street has his house on a big chain, so that when the snow falls it just picks up the house.
He never has to plow.
Then again, when we have a year like last year, sometimes he doesn’t come down for weeks.
The guy on my right has a Boro SnowChewer. Actually, I am being a chauvinist here: what I should have said is that the guy and gal on my right seem to both be out there when it snows, wo-manning their Chewer.
The lady on my left has a very short driveway, and uses a Krupps Snow-Juicer: it takes a very long time, even with her short driveway, but she says she gets about a half gallon of juice in the bargain.
The Infante family has everything heated: their driveway, their lawn, their mailbox, and their roof. Their lawn stays green the whole year. We tell new people they heat with nuclear energy.
It’s an odd sight, but one we’ve gotten used to: in the middle of the biggest blizzards, the whole Infante family out there on their lawn, in beach chairs, having snacks and watching the plows go by.
Of course there’s good and bad to the heated lawn thing. Last year, during the height of the snowfall, several weeks went by when everyone’s mailbox was buried under about ten feet of plowed snow.
So all the mail was delivered to the Infantes.
I didn’t pick mine up until May 1st, and Mr. Infante was not too neighborly when I did.
I’ve thought about getting a more powerful snow re-arranging device, but besides the expense, I am a bit intimidated by the terminology.
There are snow blowers, throwers, juicers, chewers, chompers, stompers and one that makes slurpees too.
Some are great with deep snow, some just with flurries and the like.
Some you are only supposed to use on paved areas, some on grassy areas, some on ski slopes, and some on ice.
The neighbors ‘Chewer’ has a heated driver’s area, a four-speaker sound system, fog lights and a Panini grill.
If you use the Snow Juicer on grass or gravel you could permanently ruin it, and the juice tastes horrible.
The Snow Stomper requires four guys from the DPW department to be harnessed to an old Flexible Flyer and marched around the yard until the snow has been stomped down to a manageable level.
I actually made the Chomper up: there’s no such thing –although my brother Bob used to eat more than his fair share of fresh snow when we were kids.
Some people say that the SnowThrower and the SnowBlower and the SnowBore are the same thing.
I supposed that’s true, for the first two: they’re only different in terms of the size of their engines and total snow re-arranging capacity.
But the SnowBore is clearly different. While the others only come out after the snow has fallen, the SnowBore is usually going back and forth, up and down the street, long before the first flake has fallen, making exaggerated claims as to how much snow ‘he got’, and how long ‘he was out there’.

I’m not trying to claim that I am expert in snow removal, far from it. But I do think I have made the right choice as regards snow removal equipment, and I’ll tell you why.
The most important factor to consider when removing snow is how long the job will take.
You want the job to take no less than one hour, no more than four. So estimate the amount of area you have to clear, and the capacity of the device you are considering purchasing, so that after a six inch snow fall you will be out of the house for 2 ½ hours.
Much less and your significant other will doubt you did the job right.
Much more and they will suspect you’ve been hanging out at the mailbox with your buddies, drinking beer, smoking cigars, and telling snow stories.
If you time it just right, when you come back in the house you’ll find that you are appreciated –as much for the work you’ve done, as for the quiet time they’ve had without you.