The Sidewalk Ends in Halifax…

 

Halifax.

The sidewalks END in Halifax.

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Okay.

So I was just reading THIS ARTICLE telling me that I ought to start being responsible for clearing our sidewalk corners.

Newsflash – I have ALWAYS been responsible for clearing the sidewalks around our house. I am old school, that way.

But last winter the city confused the issue by hiring a small army of sidewalk plows and announcing that THEY were going to clear the sidewalks.

Okay, I thought. So THEY will clear them now.

So I started leaving the sidewalks go.

First winter it worked pretty well. They got out there regularly and kept the sidewalks reasonably clear, although their tiny little sidewalk-plows never did manage to clear the sidewalk down the pavement like I used to with my one lone shovel.

I could live with that.

But this year they have forgotten how to drive straight and have plowed over about six of my rose bushes – the ones that I planted around my yard. Some of these rose bushes are two or three feet in from where the sidewalk ends and they still seem to somehow manage to avoid the sidewalk and roll across my yard.

Then, to make matters worse the street plow has begun pushing the snow from the street up onto the corner of the sidewalk, completely obstructing our side street sidewalk from the main street sidewalk.

I am talking about a Volkswagen and a half sized hill of compacted snow pushed across our sidewalk.

And now this councilor is telling us that WE ought to go and shovel that up.

Okay, so like I said I don’t really mind shoveling sidewalks. In fact every year that I lived here in Halifax my sidewalk has ALWAYS been cleared. By me. With one shovel.

Monday morning I hacked a path through that snow drift – building a makeshift stairway up over the drift so that myself and my wife could get over the drift and down to the bus terminal.

Wednesday night – after all that snow fell, I went out to try and hack it clear and while I was out there shoveling buddy with the plow came in and heaped up two more microbuses worth of snow.

I am sorry. There is no phone booths around anymore so I CANNOT step into a phone booth and turn into Superman.

You click this image and it will take you to a really cool article on the history of Superman and the public telephone booth.

When did snow removal become pushing-the-snow-aside-and-letting-the-public-deal-with-it?

I am done ranting now. It won’t change a damn thing.

Somebody send for Lois Lane.

Elvis has left the building.

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

A Snow-maggedon Blizzard from hell…

This is what I looked out to on our front deck yesterday morning. Click the picture and it will take you to the latest news story on this snow-maggedon blizzard-from-hell.

I kicked my way out of the side door this morning to go and clear a path for Belinda’s trip to work. The side door was frozen as well as the front door and by the end of this winter we may need a new screen door on the side – and possibly a new front door as well.

May would be a GREAT month for a door-to-door door salesman to come knocking on our door.

I may have just sprained a neural synapses or two in that last sentence.

For those who haven’t been following the story Halifax had about 30 cm of snow dumped on it’s head this Sunday. Then, Wednesday we got gifted with about another 50 cm or so.

It is hard typing this with shovel-weary arms – but I feel as if I have to get word out before the city gives way to the weight of the snow and tips off sideways and slowly drifts out into the gray Atlantic.

Neither of our sidewalks have been touched by the city – and the end of our sidewalk that leads out to the street that leads to the bus terminal is buried beneath about a Volkswagen and a half of plowed-in snow. On Monday morning I managed to dig a sort of a staircase so that my wife and I could climb over that Volkswagen and a half to get to work – but I have tried these last two mornings and the snow is just too heaped up to get through and too softly-packed to hew out a makeshift staircase.

 

So I stomped down the sidewalk in the other direction until I came to a wee path that somebody had cleared from their own house to the street. The path had been plowed over by the snowplow – but I cleared that and then stomped up and down the sidewalk in my size ten gum rubbers to try and snowshoe out a path for my wife to walk upon.

Turn left at Albuquerque and just keep was what I told her when she headed off to work this morning.

I have had the last two days off of work – due to the snowed-in city. The buses were not running and so the office was closed. The city was ALMOST shut down. Nearly everything closed – shopping malls, offices and such.

Yesterday it was warm, so I clambered up our extension ladder onto the roof and shoveled most of the roof clean. I was a little surprised and somewhat unnerved to find about four feet of snow drifted directly over my writing office. No wonder the ceiling had been creaking.

Our car out back in the driveway has been buried for sometime. When this whole snow-maggedon first began back in February I came down with a murderous case of walking pneumonia and spent a good part of the month on my back – and so that whole driveway-clearing-thing got a little out of control for me.

Just last weekend I had cleared the whole driveway and was working on the North Wall that the street plows had built across the exit of my driveway – and then that Sunday storm hit.

I might go out again today in the afternoon to attack that driveway a bit. I would like to go for a ride in that car with my wife – seeing as we paid for new snow tires in the beginning of winter, before all of this snow buried the car.

Well, at least there hasn’t been much wear and tear on those new tires.

Laugh if you want to. Me, I am too tired to chuckle.

🙂

All right, maybe not that tired…

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon