How to Clear the Snow from your Driveway

When I was growing up in Ireland we didn’t have to worry very much about clearing snow from the driveway.  First of all with few exceptions the snow, which fell overnight, was gone by noon, and secondly since very few people had cars, there were no driveways to clear.  After leaving Ireland, however, I remember the first time it snowed when I had bought my first house.  I could not wait to get home and get out there with a shovel to clear the snow, it was going to be fun, and it was fun for the first half-hour.  After that I found I was taking more frequent breaks to warm my hands or have a smoke, which I did at that time. 

I was a lot younger then and I did not feel the cold, but as each subsequent winter’s first snowfall arrived, I found the enjoyable part of the task was shrinking.  As my son got a little older, and able to lift a shovel full of snow, he first started to help with the task and then gradually, being always wanting to please his dad, started to take over the task.  He was always out there when or before the snow stopped falling and never had to be reminded.  This worked out very well, but as each winter progressed I found the driveway was becoming much narrower. 

However my son grew up and went to University and the snow still had to be cleared.  Sonia’s family and mine had been combined by that time and we had moved into a bigger house with a wider driveway in an area where they got a lot more snow.  Her two boys were not old enough to handle the task but I tried to enlist their assistance.  I thought I would solve the problem by buying a snow blower, thinking this would be fun as well, but, just as no matter where a non-smoker sits in a room of smokers, the smoke from their cigarettes gravitates to the non-smoker, no matter which way I was pushing the snow blower, the wind would be in my face as well as some of the snow I was trying to blow elsewhere.  Needless to say the fun soon went out of that as well, and the snow blower was not always working.

As Sonia’s boys got older I tried to pass on the task and was a little surprised, and to a certain extent annoyed, by their lack of enthusiasm.  After a few disputes on the subject I noticed when I came home from work one evening, after a snowfall, the snow was cleared.   I was beginning to feel quite proud of myself about how I had laid down the law with Sonia’s boys and got them to take over the task, only to discover that Sonia to avoid disputes was paying a man with a shovel on the front of his pick-up to come and clear the snow.  At first I was a bit concerned about this outsourcing of household chores, but now that Sonia’s boys have also left home I think it was an excellent idea.  Otherwise yours truly would be out there having fun again.

As I was thinking about this today I started to think about the 10 best ways to clear the snow from the driveway and came up with the following numbered from best to worst.

1. Persuade the voters in the city to only elect councillors who will agree to have the snow clearing done by the city, and find some way of charging the cost to someone else.

2. Hire the kid next door to come over with his snow blower and clear the snow for $10.

3. Hire the kid next door to come over with his shovel and clear it for $10.

4. Buy a shovel if necessary and get the kid next door to come over and clear the snow for $10.

5. Hire someone with a front-end loader on his pickup but first polish up the crystal ball to determine whether it was best that season to pay by snowfall or season.

6. Buy a snow blower and get the kid next door to come over to use it to clear the snow for free and if necessary let him use it to clear his own driveway.

7.  Pay the kid next door $10 to come over to clear your snow with the snow blower you bought.

8. Buy a government surplus flamethrower to clear the snow, but be careful not to burn the house down in the process.

            9. Use the snow blower myself to clear the snow.