I’m just sitting around this morning with nothing to do so I
thought I’d fill in some of what I said I might. I’m not really going to talk about my ride to
work. It was snowing; the ride took forever,
cars off the road, yada yada yada. You
know the story, it happens every time it snows.
No sense rehashing it here. No, I’m
going to talk about the Dan. Dan Dan the
maniac Man.
I’m heading down the street on my way to get the now famous
milk. As I get close to the house I look
over to see if Dan’s car is still in the yard.
As I peer over, I see a set of
headlights three quarters of the way to the road. I slow down to see who it is. Is it Cait heading to work or Dan headed,
well who knows where? As I get closer I
notice the headlights seem more in the woods than on the drive. I got to the end of the drive and
stopped. I looked over and saw that the
car is almost completely sideways. As I
sat there, Dan came running up and asked for help. That’s when I pulled into the yard and got
out.
I pulled into the driveway far enough to get completely off
the road. I climbed out of the truck and
headed over to Dan’s car. I asked him
what happened. He says that he was headed
to a friend’s. He said he was having
trouble getting the car out of the yard and that it had been stuck several
times. He said he almost got the car out
of the yard once. I look at the driveway
and there’s at LEAST a foot of snow. I
questioned how he thought he was going to get the car out. He said that he had gotten the car stuck just
turning it around and that Cait was helping.
He said they had gotten the car all the way up to the road but had to
stop to let a car pass. Once they
stopped, there was no getting going again. The top of my driveway is on a slight
incline. Once they stopped there was no
way for them to get traction to get going forward again. Dan shoveled and pushed and shoveled and pushed
enough to get the car back down to the bottom of the incline so they could get
another running start at it. Except now,
all the snow is packed down making it all that much more slippery. I was able to get my truck off the road only because
Dan had shoveled the end of the drive.
Sweet.
So I looked at Dan and asked, “Why didn’t you just plow the
driveway before you headed out?” His
response was that he was late and didn’t have time. I asked how long he had been working on
getting his car out, he said about an hour.
I then asked why he didn’t go grab the tractor when he got the car
stuck. He again said it was too much
work. He asked me for help again. I told him to hold on; I was going for the
tractor. I stood there looking at the
car and started peering up and down the drive.
You could see every spot he had gotten stuck. There’d be tire tracks, then a shoveled out
area, another set of tracks, then a shoveled spot. I just shook my head and headed up to the
house. Dan tagged along. I kept asking
why he didn’t use the tractor. He said
it was too much work. I asked why he didn’t
use the snow blower. He again said it
was too much work. As we reached the
house we are still talking about using the tractor and snow blower and Dan thinking
it was too much work to use either. I
looked at him and asked ‘Really, you think the snow blower and tractor are MORE
work than wielding that shovel you’re holding.”
His only response was “We almost got it out, if we hadn’t had to stop
for that other car….”
I have a small Tractor.
It’s a real tractor but as tractors go it’s tiny. It’s not a riding mower with a bucket. It’s a tractor, tractor with three PTOs and hydraulics. It’s diesel.
It’s got four wheel drive and a locking rear differential. Now, I wasn’t
planning on using it for plowing snow this year so I didn’t put the weight box
on it. I have the loader on it but that’s
just because it’s a pain to take off.
Even without the extra weight it will move more snow that I can by hand.
But not as much as when I’ve got the
weight on it. I fired up the tractor,
lowered the bucket and headed back to the car.
I could push snow about 20 feet then I’d have to stop and either scoop
or push the pile to the side. It took me
a few minutes but I finally reached the car.
I dug it out (Dan was still trying to use the shovel. Why? I don’t know,
to feel useful maybe.) I made another couple of passes up and down the driveway
to make it wide enough for the car and truck to get by. When it was clear enough, I pulled the car
out of the snow and backed it maybe 100 feet down the drive. I widened where the car was so I could pull my
truck down and off the side of the drive so as to allow Dan’s car to slip past. When I pulled the truck off the side of the road,
I pulled over too far and got it stuck.
I plowed out the top part of the drive then pulled the tractor behind the
truck. By this time the snow banks on
either side of the drive were about two feet tall. It remained me of a bowling alley with the
bumpers up. When Dan pulled past the
back of my truck there couldn’t have been more than 1 inch of clearance.
I’m standing behind my truck waiting for Dan to pull past. The driveway is slick. Not icy slick but oily slick. It wasn’t cold enough for things to ice
up. All the compressed snow in the drive
was starting to melt and that made it slick, wet, slushy slick. Anyway, with tires spinning and slipping Dan
made it up the driveway and out into the road.
He drove off without even so much as a wave. He left me standing there dripping wet and
leaning his shovel wondering how I was going to free my truck.
I got the tractor out and dug out my truck. I finished plowing the driveway and went in
the house. That part of the story is
history.
Anyway, Saturday rolls around and I’m doing my chores. I was thinking about the night before and
called Dan. When I reached him I told
him he should come home that I wanted to teach him to use the tractor so he
could take care of things himself.
I’m taking a break and having some lunch in front of the TV
when Dan finally comes home. I called
him into the room and sat him down to talk. As he sat down he looks at me and says “you
know Dad, I know how to use the tractor.”
I asked him why he hadn’t used it to clear the driveway the day
before. His response was that he didn’t want
to. I started in on him. I let him know how under-impressed with him I was. I started pontificating about how he
conducted himself, about how he drove off and left me standing in the driveway
with both my truck and tractor stuck. As
with the night before I launched into my 22 year old athlete son letting his 55
year old sickly father take care of all the snow, in the cold, by himself, in
the dark.
As I’m talking I see Dan lean over and shield his eyes. After a minute or so I see his shoulders
slightly raising and falling. Dan, MY son, my reserved, quiet, sensitive
son is obviously and visibly moved by what I am saying. I
could see there was remorse in his heart.
After a minute I reached out, rubbed his shoulders a little and asked
if he was OK. After a second he removed his hand and sat up. There was just the hint of a tear in his eye,
and a smile on his face. He looked at me
and said, “Boy it must suck being you.” and started laughing out loud.
