By Jeff Woodard
February 2009
When I took a break last weekend from hours of chipping, chiseling and scalding 10 to 12 inches of ice out Of my gutters, it wasn’t for a hot bowl of soup! Or a steamy Cup of tea. Or a chance to toast my frigid digits in front of the fireplace.
Figuring I had spent much of the past few weekends “hunkered” (God, I’m learning to loathe that word) down in the cozy confines of my basement watching movies and reading, I needed to get out of the house, off the ladder, away from the yard and — feeling an extreme sense of adventure on a day that promised clearing skies and thawing temperatures — possibly even into another county. I relished a run for the border.
When I spoke with my parents — somehow unaffected by North Coast winter weather —
they seemed unfazed by it all. That they are in central Florida till April may fuel their
fazelessness. At any rate, I told them I had spoken with my sister that afternoon and that
maybe it’d a idea for the two of us to check on Mom and Dad’s homestead. I had
received reports of way-high piles of snow on, and hanging over the edges Of, the roof
and awnings of their mobile home. Warmer weather would mean melting but heavier
snow. Heavier snow does not bode well for roofs and awnings.
“You don’t need to be goin’ Out there if it’s still bad out,” said Dad, the welfare of his
children first and foremost among his concerns. “Dad, really,” replied the loyal son, “it’s
supposed to warmer tomorrow. No snow, and the start ofa thawing is actually
forecast. “And besides, Dad, I’ve goi to get outta this house for a while.”
Cabin Fever. Stir Crazy. You name it, I felt it. Woe is the poor man resigned to the role
of self-committed winter shut-in. I had to get out. Away from the ice that was still on my
sidewalk, out of sight of the 5-foot piles of snow mounded oneither side of the end of my
driveway. Saturday at non, my sister called. She and my brother-in-law, roof rake in tow,
would be driving over from Warren and I would trek out from Lakewood to meet them at
the parental abode in Chardon.
Now making a trip to Chardon in mid-January to “get away” from the snow and ice in
Lakewood is like studying English to pass a math exam; practicing piano on a violin. But,
I reasoned on the surprisingly relaxing trip our 1-90. it was a change Of scenery. True, the
further east I went, the whiter and whiter that scenery became, but how could that
surprise a native Chardonite, someone who grew up in a house at the end of the snowiest
driveway in the snowiest town in the snowiest snowbelt in the state? I lhink about the
winters of •77 and ’78 and my back, neck and shoulders plead for mercy. The shoveling.
The scraping. The snow blowing. And when that was done, the shoveling- the scraping
and the snow blowing. The fence that separated our driveway from the school property
next door — and the fact that our driveway was 3 feet lower than said property — was a
godsend for the next-door neighbors. We got all our Snow and theirs. And mostly in the
driveway.
Wind-whipped squalls buried our cars. Relatives would come to visit, only to
stranded. In a matter of hours. Snow banks would rise so high that the chute of the snow
blower couldn’t Clear them. By mid-January, after countless man-/woman-/boy-/girl
hours of clearing the driveway, we’d attack the 4-foot wall of snow that had transformed
the driveway into a 50-foot luge run.
One night, Dad was snowed in at work 10 miles away — 10 snow-clogged, drifted,
impassable miles away. After Mom, Sis and I had gone to bed, we heard a knock at the
back door. It was my cousin, with his 4-wheel-drive truck complete with snow plow.
He’d attempted to navigate the 2-lane country road leading to his rural home, got within
about a mile of it and encountered vehicle-eating snow drifts like he’d never seen. So an
about-face he made. We wondered, with three of our cars parked, “how did you get in the
driveway?” Puzzled, he replied, “There are three cars in the driveway?’ • In the morning,
we found out that in gunning his monster machine to get off the Street, he came within an
eyelast of ramming Sis’s pride-n-joy white Firebird. Her antenna sticking Out of the snow
just in front Of his truck indicated how near the miss had been.
The winter of ’99 has been cakey in comparison. Oh, sure, I’ve grumbled about aching
neck and shoulder muscles, whined about sweeping, scraping and shoveling, and envied
my parental units’ snowbird status.
At least I’ve been able to find my car