JANUARY 12, 2025 – After blowin’ smoke, as I’m doing most of the time, today I broke from the mold and blew some snow. Overnight in these parts we received our third measurable snowfall of another wimpy winter. “Measurable” is a relative term; maybe an inch and a half, if you use you an elastic ruler as a gauge. Another measure of depth—or lack thereof—was that this morning most folks in the neighborhood used an old-fashioned shovel for snow removal.
There were three exceptions: our neighbor across the alley who used a leaf-blower, but he and his wife are recent transplants from Houston, so he had a semi-valid excuse; an old guy on the next block who deployed his 10-HP industrial gauge Toro Red Monster, but, as I said, he’s an old guy, so there you go; then, using a Greenworks 60-volt electric snowblower . . . there was, uh . . . me . . . who had no excuse or special dispensation except that my low-noise, low-powered electric snowblower needed a sense of purpose and belonging—this being its first deployment since early December 2023. Also, use of a snowblower today was good for the morale: it allowed me to pretend that we had enough of new-fallen snow to justify . . . blowin’ snow.
As I pushed the machine up and down our driveway, pretending I was driving a double-axel Mack truck equipped with a double plow up front and an environmentally friendly chemical mix spreader in back, I recalled ancient winters when my main winter chore as a kid was shoveling our family’s driveway. We had more snow back then, and after major snowstorms, especially, I had my work cut out for me. I never groused about it, mainly because it gave me an excuse for not practicing my violin. But over time snow-shoveling became a matter of household pride for me, not to mention a lucrative source of allowance.
Our snow removal tools included three shovels and an ice chopper. The ice chopper rarely saw work before the thaw-freeze cycles that occurred most often in March. Compared to the cheapie chopper that is among our garage tools of the current day, our ancient chopper was the real deal. It was made in ’mrca somewhere—of thick-gauge steel that never apologized and never needed to: designed for chopping ice, it could just about bust up concrete if you didn’t have a jak-hammer handy.
The shovels included a heavy-duty scoop shovel—the equivalent of a front-end loader. Made of (American) steel, it was a heavy lift for a young kid, so it was put into service only when the snow was so deep, Dad decided I could use his help. Another back-up shovel was on the lighter end of the spectrum—a flat shovel much stronger than the flimsy excuses for snow shovels sold nowadays; shovels imported from some SE Asian country where snow is unknown. This back-up shovel was more for nooks and crannies around the house and garage that couldn’t be reach by the “Plow Blade.”
This third shovel was the workhorse of our shovel fleet. It too was “Made in the U.S.A.” as were most things in the America of a million years ago. It featured a curved heavy-gauge steel blade and a sturdy handle made of ash wood. This piece of serious snow removal equipment meant business and reminded me of the blade on the municipal snow plow that cleared our streets back in those days. In my mind it was the “Plow Blade,” and I was the truck that pushed it.
There was both art and science to shoveling the driveway, just as there was art and science to everything else that Dad undertook. Before I became the shoveler in chief, almost every time it snowed, I’d watched Dad use the Plow Blade. He’d start down the middle of the driveway from the garage and clear a path down to the end of the driveway apron. He never left anything but clear pavement behind him. He’d then go back to the garage end and shovel the two halves of the driveway now separated by the middle path. He applied a rhythm and efficiency to the work that dazzled me. What impressed me most, however, was how neat and even he made the snowbanks along the sides of the driveway and all the way along the curb that bordered each side of the apron.
When I took over the lion’s share of shoveling, my goal was to make it look as though Dad had been at the controls of the . . . Plow Blade.
On my one-mile walk to “Little Switzerland” early this afternoon, I thought about Dad’s shoveling standards and expertise. Except for street crossings, the entire way from our house to the park is along neighborhood sidewalks. By the time of my hike nearly all the sidewalks had been cleared. I assigned imaginary demerits to the three or four homeowners who hadn’t yet shoveled. On the rest, I noticed how the marks and scrapings on the pavement revealed the type of shovel used—metal (a few) or plastic (a lot)—and the standards of the shoveler. Metal shovels left less residual snow; the shovelers with higher standards (or was it time . . . or money to pay a maintenance company to do the job?) had more even edges and didn’t cut corners at the sidewalk corners.
“St. Moritz” (the downhill slopes of “Little Switzerland”) was dominated by ski school classes—younger kids, mostly. During the recent cold snap, the maintenance crew has been working the snow-making equipment almost around the clock and grooming the main slope to perfection. I seemed to be the only grown-up skier who wasn’t an instructor—downhill or x-c. From the summit I surveyed the kids and instructors on the slope below. Their numbers meant I’d have to make my ascents by ski-skating on the very fringe of the slope and make sure I was always looking uphill to avoid getting yelled at or more to the point, to avoid an out-of-control kid on his way down. (I didn’t encounter a single such kid; the instructors deserve credit for keeping their charges in line.) I noticed too, lots of kids and their double-rotor helicopter parents standing in groups on the outrun at the bottom of the ski hill. I was sad that a snow drought continues for the second winter in a row, but at the same time I was heartened to see that none of us there on St. Moritz had given up on winter.
If we want to make Minnesota Great Again, we’ll have to do a daily snow dance[1], but meanwhile, we must make do with what we have—snow-making temperatures, snow-making equipment, and snow-grooming equipment, and most important of all, an attitude that embraces winter, even when there’s precious little of it to embrace.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
[1] According to the Minnesota DNR, as of January 7, 2025, 48% of Minnesota is under drought conditions and 37% is “abnormally dry.” These conditions do not portend well for spring planting—and fall harvesting.
