Awesome Neighbor is Awesome
Posted on March 25, 2013 Posted by John Scalzi 43 Comments
So here’s my neighbor clearing my driveway with his snow plow. Why? Because he enjoys doing it, and knows we appreciate it, and anyway, that’s what neighbors are for. We are in return neighborly and do things for him as well, because again, it’s what you do. But I’m not gonna lie, I suspect I’m getting the better end of the deal here. I’m just glad he has a kick doing it. Otherwise I’d be trapped here until May.
One of the main reasons why I miss living in a rural environment.
Man, it’d take you until May to do that by hand.
It’s great when neighbors are awesome!
You owe your salvation to a Ford. Sinner. Go thouest to thy nearest GM dealer and beg forgiveness and a 1.9% APR.
The last big snow we got, my elderly neighbor did our sidewalk with the snowblower when he did his. We live on a corner, and seeing him do half my work nearly made me kiss him (which I think might have embarrassed him). I did their drive one day when we had an afternoon snow, and they were out. It’s good when people look out for each other.
Not to be impolite or anything, but that really isn’t a lot of snow, which makes your neighbor even more awesomely awesome – or just eager to have fun plowing wherever he can find an available road to plow.
Lif Strand:
Actually, it’s between four and six inches deep in the driveway, depending on where in the driveway you are, and the driveway is more than five hundred feet long. So, yeah, it’s a lot of snow.
Snow can bring out that sense of community…when we were stationed in the Far North of Japan, we would have shoveling block parties to deal with the regular 3-5 feet we’d get dumped on us. That and the neighbors who had 4WD vehicles would make commissary runs…
So, that would be about 8000 pounds* of snow. 500ft long by say 8 feet wide by about .4 feet depth. Multiplied by an average weight of about 5 pounds per cubic foot if it’s on the fluffier side. More like 15000 or 20000 if it’s on the wetter/heavier side. I’ll take the plow.
*I am not good at math. Dart throwing would be a more accurate method of calculation than me doing any math. These numbers are not meant to be factual.
My mom’s neighbor, who incidentally also farmed our land, used to plow her driveway for her. And then we found out that the money we were making off the “fifty-fifty” split of our corn or bean yield for the year was, well, a lot less than most people thought was average for Darke County acreage. And they clued us in to how much more we could make by straight-up renting at a flat fee. Yeah, Mom’s neighbor doesn’t plow her driveway any more.
Your awesome neighbour is indeed awesome; that’s really very impressive. Should the occasion arise, please tell him that his awesomeness has been recognised on this side of the pond also…
Coolness indeed. And, go Ford!
I wish my neighbor was Mr. Plow! Then again, I live in Alabama so he’d be pretty bored most of the time.
I always snowblow at least 2 houses on either side of us whenever I can. sometimes more than that. Although the last blizzard took me about 8 hours just to dig out my own space, so I was too wiped to do the neighbors. Maybe it’s a rural thing.
It’s all relative. Four to six inches of snow here in my part of New Mexico doesn’t rate getting out the snow plow for anything but federal and state roads. The rest of us just drive over it and that’s that.
But think how much work you could get done if you were trapped in the house until May!
Trapped until May? Nonsense! See, what you do is hitch the cats up to a sled and then…
Wait, this whole plan sounded a lot better in my head.
Good neighbors obviate good fences.
Most truly awesome neighbors drive Ford trucks. Just sayin . . . .
He’s a good neighbor, but I bet he also gets a lot of fun out of plowing. Probably gets his done, which just whets his appetite, and tells the Mrs. “Gotta go plow Scalzi’s driveway, it’s the neighborly thing to do” and whoops in delight (maybe inwardly, he’s Midwestern) as he zooms down your 500 ft, of new snow.
“Thanks, neighbor. If you ever need a blog post, or maybe a cat photo, let me know!”
He missed a few spots.
Our neighbors are helpful like that, in that they clear the street in front of our houses.
I get it. If I lived in a place where it snowed, and had my own snow plow attachment, I’d plow the heck out of everything, too.
Ah, yes. The classic Norwegian wintertime activity of feline skikjøring.
Here in Auburn, IN we 4″ of snow this morning at 11:00. Now at 7:30 it is all gone. My favorite kind of storm.
“Trapped until May? Nonsense! See, what you do is hitch the cats up to a sled and then…
Ah, yes. The classic Norwegian wintertime activity of feline skikjøring.”
Yes, that’s why we have Norwegian Forest Cats.
This is why i moved to Florida from Chicago
Well done, Awesome Neighbor!
@idiosynchronic: Generous Mothers? Bite your tongue.
I had a friend who used to plow my driveway. Then we had a bit of akward silence after he hit my garage door.
My parents bought their first snowblower this year (after multiple decades of WI winters) and my dad was THRILLED to be able to snowblow the elderly next door neighbor’s sidewalk/driveway. I happened to be home at the time and he came back inside all “I’ve always wanted to be able to do that!” I wonder if it’s a Midwest thing? Or a snow thing?
@idiosynchronic. He own’s a Mini Cooper Clubman. A Ford plowing his drive is like having a cigarette with his whiskey at the brothel, the smoke ain’t gonna change his fate.
Dude! Truck mounted snowplow! If I had one of those I would be swooping around hollering about being the master of all I survey!
Of course, living in texas where half an inch of snow can shut down the city, this is a purely hypothetical situation.
Oh, yeah! It’s good to live in that kind of neighborhood. When I was a teenager we lived near the guy whose job included opening up the school bus compound in the morning. He had a plow like that so he could get to work when it snowed. We were uphill from him, not en route, but he’d always plow the neighborhood streets before heading off to work.
The bastard. We never had a snow day. *sob*
My next door neighbor wants to cook for her children. They live a 1,000 miles away. So my family gets chicken with snap peas. Made by a Chinese born, Chinese grandma.
Did I mention she grows the snow peas in her garden?
Of course I shovel her drive way, and mow her lawn.
I remember one time as a kid where we got about three feet that dumped off really fast. My Dad took his state vehicle (a Jeep Cherokee) and proceeded to ram the snow as far as he could go, then would back up so my brother and I could shovel it out of the way. It maybe covered about ten or fifteen feet at a go. We cleared the road out of our subdivision and past two other developments on the way down to the main highway; it was just about a quarter mile, about half on a twenty degree incline.
Part of the reason for it was general neighborliness, part of it was so that emergency vehicles would have a route in (Dad and brother were volunteer firefighters/first responders – making it easier to get in and out was just good sense), and part of it was just having a means to reach civilization with our family land boat. Our neighbors stood and watched the whole time without a thank you or offer of help, for an entire day. When we got done, they shoveled their own driveways and left to do what people do. Dad bought a family Jeep in the spring, and never again did we bother shoveling the road.
How many churros does a snow plowing equal?
Awesome neighbor, indeed.
Oh, he’s doing this for fun. That F-250 is a couple generations old. People plowing driveways for money always have a truck that’s less than three years old, because that’s how long it takes to destroy it. (No, the brand doesn’t matter here.)
And if you like plowing, why not do the neighbors’ driveways too?
Man if I had a plow on my truck (not that I actually have a truck either, but roll with it), all of my neighbors would get notice back in, like, November saying “Please please please let me at your driveway if it snows.”
Because, um, Plow. Awesome.
Which isn’t to say your neighbor isn’t a cool dude. Just that I understand why he likes doing that.
With the Mini Countrymans’s 6.3 inches of clearance with fully-inflated tires, 4-6 inches of snow on the ground is a lot. Plus, not knowing whether the driveway is shaded (are those trees to the south of the road?) means we can’t evaluate whether foregoing plowing now means ice on the road in a couple of days.
I always agreed with Robert Frost that the adage, “Good fences make good neighbors” was not only wrong, but wrong-headed. Happily have some good neighbors of my own!
Good fences define the boundaries you invite good neighbors over. They also keep your sheep from eating her cow’s pasture.
And if they’re drystone fences, they’re something you and your neighbor can work on collaboratively. Whether that leads to strife or accord is another thing….