So, just as you probably don't remember my bitching-about-wrapping-presents post last year, you also probably don't remember me discussing how, because the mailbox for the whole street is closest to our house, 90% of the time, we remove the snow from around it, with the other 10% of it being done by the people who live to our left, the rest of the neighbors contributing zero. Just trust me when I tell you I've told you this story before.
Now these people who live to the left of me, we are not exactly friendly with them. We aren't hostile or engaged in some kind of petty neighbor war, either, but the paterfamilias is kind of a jerk and his wife, for example, couldn't be bothered to tell me when FedEx (three times!) tried to unsuccessfully deliver my package to her house by mistake. Apparently she just took the slips off her door and threw them away. They have, I think, three sons, all of whom are older than D; I'm not sure which of them still live at home, but since there was less loud, drunken midnight talking in the street directly below my bedroom window the last couple summers, I'm assuming not all of them. Not that I ever bitched them out about the noise, mind you; again, I emphasize, no petty neighbor wars. We basically just ignore each other. The youngest son, however, did, a couple years ago, see me out raking my leaves while he was doing something in his driveway and spontaneously came over to help me bag them up, which I thought was very nice.
Well, just a bit ago we went out to remove the snow. My snowblower isn't the most powerful and the snow was heavy and crusted over, so it was shovel, then snowblow, shovel, then snowblow. Basically we just did the entrance to the driveway and the first half of it, and the path from the door to the sidewalk before leaving the rest for tomorrow. I was just finishing the path before going in when the kid from next door came out to snowblow with his much more powerful machine. Apparently he saw me and saw that we hadn't finished everything, because after I went in, he not only did the mailbox, he came over and did the whole rest of my driveway out of the goodness of his heart.
Now you *know* I will never ever bitch him out in the future for drunken shenanigans beneath my bedroom window. He's definitely earned a free pass, yo.
And perhaps some day one of the other neighbors will do the mailbox and we can all feel warm and fuzzy about the neighborliness of snow removal.
xoxo
3 comments:
I too had luck getting blown: I was going to disinter my car Saturday afternoon to drive J to the airport, and our super was out with the snow blower. He told me to just back it out and he blew out the entire parking space for me. Still more snow covered when I got back to take it later, but it wasn't soooo bad.
Of course, then it snowed another half foot Sunday, but again I was able to catch him in back with the blower this morning and cleaned off the car enough to back up and have it blown out again.
Guess who's getting a bigger tip this Xmas... especially since yesterday's snow was a lot harder to move, even though there was less of it!
Speaking of blowing, the wind was blowing in such a way that my car wasn't too barely covered on Saturday, and though it was more covered this morning it was *so* deep between the cars cause the wind had blown much of it away as well.
I was telling my boss this story earlier, including the part about my not-so-powerful snowblower, and he said his is pretty hardcore. He knows because he, um, accidently sucked the entire Sunday New York Times into it and spent the next 20 minutes very gingerly fishing it all out with a long-handled screwdriver :-) :-)
Snowblowers do need a bit of raw meat every now and then to be happy. I'd never heard of one quite so literate as to prefer the Sunday New York Times.
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