Three enterprising young lads presented themselves at our front door recently offering a fee-for-service transaction. They proposed to remove the snow that had accumulated on our walkway, and perhaps also the snow on our front sidewalk, for a mutually acceptable price. To be determined.
They were, I don’t know, maybe 8 or 10 years old. I suspected that they were probably not too experienced in the de-snowing art, given how relatively rarely the opportunity arises in Nashville. My suspicion was buttressed when I saw that one of their tools was a narrow board that, judging from its pointed French gothic end, had previously served on a picket fence.
They were definitely unskilled in the art of negotiating wages. They tentatively suggested $5, or maybe $8, or maybe more – $20? – if the sidewalk was included. My wife and I agreed to their vague terms, and they set about their task.
As a veteran of 20 winters in New York, I am more experienced than I ever wanted to be in snow removal. Neighbors up there expected one another to clear their sidewalks for convenience, and village rules required it for safety.
Nashville’s recent traffic-paralyzing, school-canceling event – my neighbor measured the fluffy total in our vicinity at just under 8 inches – would qualify as routine in our old neighborhood. A creaky, one-armed Korean War veteran could dispatch it with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Unfiltered.
We regularly faced buildups of 12 inches or more. The most was almost 2 feet, which, trust me, gets heavy. My wife always gamely pitched in, while I sometimes played the potential-heart-attack card.
We never bought a snowblower (don’t ask), so I took advantage whenever the opportunity to subcontract the labor became available. A difference was the laborers there tended to be in their early 20s, and quite possibly not native to this country. Another difference: They were good.
I mean no disrespect to my trio of Nashville tenderfoots. At their age, I was completely unfamiliar with snow. Photographic evidence insists that it fell in my Mississippi Coast hometown in 1964, but I don’t recall any significant interaction with the stuff until my late 20s, when a surprising 6.3 inches fell in Jackson.
I did not bother to clear it. Instead, my neighbor Chris, his then-future-ex-wife, Cindy, and I attempted to slide about on it with the closest thing to a sled Chris had at hand: a door. Doors, we quickly learned, suck as snow playthings, lacking either runners or an upcurved end.
Fortunately, another neighbor had an actual, Citizen Kane’s Rosebud-type sled that she offered. We traipsed to a nearby hill where we each enjoyed multiple trips down and trudges back up. I finally got the winter-wonderland childhood I’d been missing, a fun memory to this day.
What was I talking about before?
Oh yeah, the kids. I welcomed their initiative in seeing the financial possibilities of a snowfall. I’ve long wondered why no kids these days see the same opportunity in lawns, which in warm months reliably require cropping every week or so.
I started mowing for cash at age 9. (My own yard, as Daddy made clear, was a nonprofit obligation.) At age 11 or so, my neighbor Ken and I even formed a lawn-mowing corporation, which we sealed with an elaborately handwritten contract bearing our signatures. Our first job was for $1.25, which we split 62 cents for me, 63 cents for him. We figured we’d make up the imbalance with some future job.
We never had a future job. I don’t remember why. I’d ask Ken, but I haven’t seen or heard from him in almost 50 years. Here’s the strange thing: Ken didn’t even mow his own yard. His dad hired a fellow.
I’ve read various theories as to why kids these days don’t mow, including that they are too busy with academics, sports or other activities. Or that they don’t need or want the money, which is why I was glad to see these budding capitalists signaling their appreciation of it.
Unfortunately, at the conclusion of their labors, significant expanses of the walkway and the sidewalk were still covered in ice, picket-fence-tool and shovels notwithstanding. One of the boys assured me that they had applied ice melt, but that the process might take two or three additional hours.
I asked what I owed, and one of them said $20. Or $25. I gave them $30, to reward their spirit, if not their competence. Two days later, my wife removed the ice. I should probably tip her.
Joe Rogers is a former writer for The Tennessean and editor for The New York Times. He is retired and living in Nashville.