Clearing Snow

After one of the warmest Novembers on record, December is proceeding with below normal temperatures and about normal snowfall. Ten degrees again this morning. Two more inches drifted onto my deck in the night, ignoring the protecting roof, swirling right under it. I hear metallic clank of blade against pavement as plows make their way over the streets for the fourth night in a row, doing their work while normal people sleep. They sound like a moving traffic accident. Then comes the sand truck, flailing its mixture of brown grit and chemical for melting snow. Jerry is out this morning, shoveling and salting. He just came in the door as I came down for coffee.

Pickup trucks drive about town with snowplows mounted on their fronts. They scrape driveways and parking lots, anywhere the city plows don’t go. A mountain of brown snowy grit is growing behind the building. “I used to plow,” Jerry says, “but now I let Rex do it. He does a good job, gets up close to the curb.”

Keeping one’s driveway and walkways free from snow is an art form, it seems, having ranges of quality and individual taste. I can almost hear Mrs. X say, “My walk is lovely and walkable, almost as she would say, “My quilt is unique and I finished it with a pleasant ruffle.” She has shoveled down to the concrete, and now her desalting chemical is melting away the last of it.

All of this snow removal seems unnecessary and counterproductive. Just let it build up in the parking lots and on the street—let it pack down as cars move over it. Shovel the walkways, but not down to the concrete, for this allows ice to form. But I say nothing. In the sixth grade, I used to let my teacher know when he was wrong. Now I wait a little longer before telling a whole culture of settled rightness that they’ve got to change.

I walked over the bridge into Canada again today. On the way I see the same bicycle track that I saw while walking to Ranier on Wednesday. The tire appears the same—knobby tread of a mountain bike—and the steady unswerving control of the rider seems unmistakable. He or she came from Canada earlier this morning and leaned the bicycle against the U.S. Border Patrol building to report for inspection. Could it be that my mystery cyclist lives in Canada and rides all the way to Ranier? I lost the track in confusion of trucks and cars at Canadian Customs.

Dee’s Restaruant on Scott Street, Fort Francis, Canada, used to be the lobby of the Fort Theatre. The motel behind it was the auditorium. This I learned from a man born in 1926 who saw a movie here just before he went to war in 1943. What other kind of person comes to Dee’s at ten in the morning? His lungs were gassed in the war. “Could do a lot of work, but my breath gives out,” he says. Still he walks a lot and appears in good condition. He might be a superman if the gas hadn’t got him.

Dee comes around, bouncing like a teenager, but she’s much older. She walks two miles to her restaurant, and then flits about in cheerful conversation while getting the orders out. She goes outside to smoke and is back in two minutes.



In case anyone thinks that I ascribe my good health to good living and exercize, no, it is pure luck. I exercise because I prefer it, just as Katrina prefers her car engine running and the steering wheel warm before she darts from the house.