I went outside to resume shoveling and the driver immediately popped out of his truck. He asked if I knew who owned the car. Yes, I said, pointing to their house.

He went over and knocked on the door. No answer. So, he came back and said he’d called the tow truck. He said he tries to be nice about these things, but this was the only pass he had scheduled for this street today and he wanted to get that pile of snow out of the road that stopped right in front of the car parked in the street. He wanted to get the road widened as much as possible before the snow storm tomorrow.

And then he apologized for stuffing my driveway full of snow, backed up, and carefully scraped it out and widened my driveway opening a little bit.

Making friends with snow plow drivers is a good thing to do.

And now I have enough wood on my deck to last a couple of weeks. It’s not as much as I wanted, but it does make me quite happy to gaze upon it. My back is numb.

Be nice to people with large machines, I’ve always said.  Now if it had been a front-end loader, think what he could have done with a cord of wood!

Sweet justice, I’d say.  Parking on the street during a snow emergency is very, very wrong.  It’s about damn time those people got what they deserve.  Towing is more than justified in this situation, unlike one (still to be resolved) I experienced late last year.

Is there some way to make sure this plow driver does your street more often?  I bet he’d make it a personal policy to do the little things to ease your end-of-driveway burden.

The way the driver talked, this is his regular route. But I wouldn’t expect to see him scrape snow out of the end of my driveway again. It was probably a one time deal while he waited to get the car towed away.

I should think that having one’s car towed would be enough incentive to keep it out of the street the next time. But that’s just during snow emergencies. I’m sure it’ll be right back out there again as soon as the emergency is lifted. If it ever is...since it keeps snowing. The streets in this town are so narrow that just about any amount of snow that requires plowing initiates a snow emergency.

Linkmeister....that reminds me. My next door neighbor’s father has a front loader. Now that would be a time saver, eh? If I had it to do over, I think I’d get a pellet stove instead of a wood stove. Sure would be a lot easier.

I thought of this after I commented earlier.  Seems to me I’d prefer to have my car parked in my driveway during a snowstorm; it would act as a shield for part of the driveway and mean that much less to shovel.

LOL My mom parked her car at the bottom of the driveway once before a massive snowstorm.  The plower pushed snow up and over her car.  We didn’t see her car for about a week.  Then several days after she dug her car out, the car slid in the driveway, went up and over the mountains of snow to either side of the driveway and into the front yard.  Her car sat there until spring.

I’m often tempted to just let my car sit under the snow until spring.  If only I could.  haha.

But what about people who don’t have any driveways?  I mean, here in my neighborhood, in the city of Scranton, most of the people on my street park in the street because there is nowhere else they could park their cars.  If someone announced that no cars could be on my street during a snow storm, the entire neighborhood of cars would wind up at the impound.

So I’m assuming this neighborhood is pretty much all properties with driveways?

And I’m with Linkmeister… Why wouldn’t you want to park your car in the driveway for a snow storm?

Linkmeister,

Obviously, these rocket scientists also haven’t figured out that a car-filled driveway becomes less snow-filled than an empty one.

But I’m not surprised.  As I recollect, they have two vehicles, one of which is ordinarily in the driveway while the other is in the street (positioned so that Kate has to be careful when backing out with the intent to head west).  The driveway could easily fit both of them, but they have never figured out how to arrange themselves such that the first to leave in the morning spends the night behind the other car. 

I have wondered, as I’m sure Kate often does, why they would make the effort to completely clear their driveway of every smidgen of snow, and then leave it unoccupied.  In heavy snow, they tend to park both vehicles on the already-narrowed street, making Kate’s driveway exit all the more treacherous.

I don’t imagine the thought ever occurred to them that with both cars in the driveway there would be less snow to clear. In fact, I’m sure that they find it much easier to just let the driveway fill up with snow, sans cars. THEY HAVE A HUGE SNOWBLOWER.

One car is currently parked in the driveway, however. We’ll see if the other one goes in the driveway tonight. Still a snow emergency in effect. It’s snowing like crazy out there.

Chloe, when I say the streets in this town are narrow, I mean they are really, really narrow. This is a very, very old town and most of the in-town streets were laid out a century and a half before the advent of automobiles. Most of the side streets are one way simply because there is no way to make them into two lane streets. In order for the plows to clear these streets, it’s necessary for all the cars to be off them. People without driveways (most in-town residents) have to park in church lots or school lots or public parking lots. That’s just the way it works here and always has been this way. There’s really isn’t any other way to do it. People accept that as part of the price of living in this town.

Except for the people across the street who have a driveway. Go figure.

Eliz...lawn art!

If we get much more snow, I’m not sure that I’ll be able to shovel out the driveway and my car may end up buried until spring. I was out there today and the piles of snow on both sides of my driveway are now so high that I had rather a lot of trouble pitching the snow off the shovel high enough to clear the tops of the piles of snow.

But the weather persons tell us that next week we’ll get another storm and this time it’ll be rain and freezing rain. That should melt some of the snow, I guess.