This post originally appeared in the Kenosha News column Sunday Mornings With Basil Willis – 2/6/2011

I have been chuckling this season at communities from other parts of the country that seem to shut down at the slightest hint of adverse winter weather. The New York-centric media has a conniption every time there is more than a dusting on the east coast, and people from the south clearly do not know how to deal with icy roads, although they seem to get ice storms every year.

We are a hardy bunch that shrugs our shoulders at winter storms. We shovel, dust ourselves off and keep going. But this last one was something else entirely. The storm itself was an awesome thing to behold, almost like a winter hurricane. Even the most hardened Wisconsinites were saying “wow.”

I love the crazy names editors come up with for big winter storms; Snowmageddon, Snowpocalypse, Snowzilla, Snowlacaust, and perhaps my favorite, SnOMG. Despite scoffing at less winterized folks, this storm deserved a name, and some respect. All of my Facebook friends from the region posted the obligatory “look how much snow we have” pictures, but none of them could match our drifts here in the epicenter.

The first challenge we had was getting a door open. All three doors were blocked by drifts. The dog hadn’t been outside for a while so we started with the back door. We managed to push it open far enough for me to slip through, but we had to dig a tunnel from the door to a low spot in the back yard for the dog. I can’t remember that last time, if ever, we had to shovel a place for the dog to do her business.

We also had to clear out the furnace exhaust, which for some reason is only a foot off the ground. It took me about 15 minutes of digging to find it, and when I finally did clear the area, there was a loud boom from the basement. Gas had been backing up and collecting in the furnace room. Besides some frightened occupants, we were lucky. “Local columnist dies in house explosion,” kept replaying in my head.

Our trusty old snow blower of ten years had been stolen from the garage over the summer so we had a new one, a nice two stage with a wide auger and six speeds. I was glad we didn’t skimp on the horsepower after seeing a neighbor with his little green plastic blower. It looked like a fertilizer spreader, almost a toy. He was ultimately helped by another neighbor with The Mother of All Snow Blowers, a beast of a machine with a canopy and headlights and a stewardess.

Despite everyone clearing their drives and sidewalks, our street was impassable for almost 24 hours. More than once during the day of shoveling, in a clear sign of aging, I thought about what a bad time it would be to have a heart attack. There was no way an ambulance was getting anywhere near our house.
It made me realize how dependent we are on being able to get in car and go somewhere, or have a car come to us. We couldn’t go to the movies, have anything delivered, or act on Grandpa’s suggestion to go to the Charcoal Grill.

It also made me think about how soft our species, or at least our culture, has become. How did people a hundred years ago deal with it? No electricity, or snow blowers, or even furnaces. You had to go outside to go to the bathroom. I’m guessing a century ago no one read a magazine while in the outhouse in February.

Exhausted and frozen after we spent three hours throwing snow and shoveling, Beth posted on Facebook, “snow days were more fun as a kid.” As we sat by the fire drinking cocktails I began to form a retort, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized she was right. Kids don’t have a mountain of work to go back to when this fun snow day is over, nor do they worry about the roof caving in, or the furnace exploding, or dying from carbon monoxide. The kids only know they replaced something boring with something fun.

After I was into my sleepwear, I looked out the window one last time at the street, and of course the plow had been by and there was a six foot mountain of snow at the end of our driveway. I looked in on Beth, who was sound asleep, put my snow gear back on and spent the next hour clearing a passage that was at least wide enough for one car. I looked around the neighborhood at the other poor schmucks that were going to have to be doing this in the morning when it would be twenty below wind chill.

When I woke up then next day the plows had been by again and it looked as though I had never even dug us out. The road had been fine the night before and didn’t appear to need another plowing. They do this on purpose I think, to vex me. “Ok, Jim, the lights are off at the Willis house and he just cleared out the drive. Let’s make another pass.” There I was at 5 am, one of the poor schmucks, with my awesome neighbor Dennis, clearing the end of my drive so I could get to work.
Just another day in paradise.