The white album

Life in the Snow Lane

By Max Alexander

Snowplow Procession Pays Homage to Driver WINDSOR — Edwin Monroe, who had a passion for plowing the snow from Maine’s roads, was doing what he loved to do most when he took ill during a storm last week. A couple of hours after the job was over, he was dead. On Sunday, as yet another snowstorm threatened a state already knee-deep in snow, a procession of a dozen plow trucks followed Monroe’s casket from an old clapboard funeral home, over Maine’s gray and white winter landscape to a graveyard in this central Maine farming town. — Associated Press, February 5

Life these days is so full of overpaid whiners that when someone finds complete fulfillment behind a snowplow, his funeral — just eight miles down the road from me — makes the national news. Edwin Monroe, the article goes on to report, plowed for 50 of his 79 years, having moved to Maine at age 18 from Connecticut — presumably seeking deeper snow.

It’s been a good year for the snowplow drivers in my corner of the state, although hardly a serious winter like they’re having in the Midwest. I know; I grew up in Michigan and have been shoveling deep snow since I can remember. When I was 11, I shoveled neighbors’ driveways to earn money for the Beatles’ White Album — which at roughly $7 was the most extravagant object I had craved in life at that point. Recently when my own 9-year-old, a second-generation Beatle fan, asked if I would buy him the White Album ($24.48 on cdnow.com), I suggested he might shovel some snow. He stared at me blankly. Snow around our house is removed by a large motorized vehicle.

Snowplows are standard household equipment around here — none of those suburban snow “throwers,” thank you. Just about every house has at least one plow hooked up to a Ford F-350 in the driveway, and usually a few more are laying around for parts or decoration. I have an ancient rusted snowplow sitting out in my blueberry field. It came with the house. I thought of getting rid of it, but I went to New York and saw a sculpture in Central Park that looked just like it (maybe a Richard Serra?), so I decided I better hang onto it.

I don’t have a working snowplow, but some primeval Michigan gene compels me to clear my own driveway. So I invested in a sort of hybrid — a massive snow throwing attachment for my John Deere lawn tractor. This $1500 chunk of steel was even more extravagant than the White Album, especially as it doesn’t quite work.

The chief problem is that lawn tractors are made to cruise lawns, not snow-covered driveways. They sit so low to the ground that even with chains and tire weights, they get stuck. And the engine, meant to turn a mower blade, doesn’t rev high enough to move large amounts of wet white stuff. Meanwhile the tiny battery, again meant to crank over in July, often fails in February. It’s easy to jumpstart with a car — assuming you can get a car through the new snow. If not, get out the shovel.

When the snow is average — say a few inches — I can quickly clear my driveway with its four-foot scoop. But in serious Maine snowstorms like the recent drop, it goes more like this: engage thrower, release safety brake, shift to forward, move several inches — engine quits; shift to neutral, disengage thrower, apply safety brake, restart, release safety brake, engage thrower, reverse a foot, move forward a few more inches — engine quits; and so on. Three hours later, my short driveway was sort of cleared. When you consider that the late Edwin Monroe would have charged $20 for that, it was a wasted morning.

Of course, just about everything I do around here would fail to impress an efficiency consultant. Raking and winnowing blueberries, pruning grape vines, pulling caterpillars off infested apple trees and planting parsnips all cost much more in my time than they yield in produce. I do it for the lifestyle and to get outdoors — although rocking a conked-out lawn tractor through a raging blizzard was not part of the rural life I envisioned.

So I was ready to admit defeat when, later that day, a telemarketer called with a “special introductory offer to receive the Portland Press Herald. ”

“Save your breath,” I said more or less politely. “No one will deliver here. We’ve tried.”

“Sir,” he said in a vaguely sarcastic tone that suggested he really meant “You inbred country bumpkin,” “we wouldn’t be calling you if the paper couldn’t be delivered in your area.”

“Oh yeah? That’s what they said the last time. It never happens. But fine, I’ll call your bluff. Sign me up.”

The very next day he called me back. “Did you receive your paper?”

“Of course not. Where are you calling from?”

“Missouri.”

“Well up here in Maine we’ve got four feet of snow piled up along the roads. The street plow turned my mailbox into a tunafish can, and even if we had a Press Herald box, it would be buried under a glacier at the end of my driveway. Say, do you get much snow down in Missouri?”

“Oh, some.” I considered pitching him on a near-new John Deere snow thrower, but I skipped it.

That would have been the end of the tractor fiasco were it not for my own hubris a week later, when I decided to clear out a walkway across my lawn. The lawn path had been my Waterloo several times, miring my tractor so badly that I had to tow it out with my truck. And Sarah was out of town, which made it even more stupid: I would have no one to help me. But the snow had melted down a bit, so off I went.

And I went a long way. Too far to reach with my truck. Then I got stuck. The wind was picking up and the temperature was dropping; I had to go to New York early the next morning. I knew if I didn’t get it out right away, it would freeze in place, possibly until April. I kicked some snow and went for the shovel.

That’s when I noticed the gaping holes in my greenhouse. Three large corrugated plastic roof panels were missing — gone with the wind. It appeared that although I had removed the heavy snowfall from the roof, the weight had bowed the panels enough to loosen them from their mounting brackets. All that remained were their trails through the snow — long straight gouges headed into my neighbor’s hay field, a vast and windswept expanse of white. I set off through the snow and biting wind to find them, but soon found myself up to my crotch in impenetrable drifts. I staggered back to the house and put on my snowshoes, but that was worse. My only hope was to set off down the road, hoping I’d catch sight of the panels blowing through the field. An hour later I had two of them in my house; the third is still missing.

By then it was dark, and the mercury was sinking like a horseshoe. I didn’t know it yet, but electricity was out all across the midcoast area; at least I still had lights. I gave up on the tractor and drove forty minutes to Belfast, where I was expected for dinner. I pulled into my aunt and uncle’s driveway and beheld the Seventh Wonder of the World: a perfectly carved walkway through the snowdrifts, right to their welcome mat. “How did you do that?” I asked my uncle. “Just a regular two-stage snow thrower. Cost about $700. I cut paths all around the house.”

“Does it ever get stuck?”

“Nah.”

I came back from New York a few days later with the flu; Sarah’s parents helped me heft the tractor out. Soon I’ll have to deal with the greenhouse, but not until this fever breaks. I might even hire a local snowplow operator — I won’t tell him I’m from Michigan — but he’s got to love his job.