Snow Plow Hot Chocolate

We got our first major sticking snow of the year and I was stressing.

Grandpa was under the weather (not feeling well); I still don’t know how to drive Johnny, his green tractor and the snow blower attachment that goes with the new red utility vehicle he traded Gator for isn’t here yet. 

I didn’t worry the first day of the storm. After all, Grandma said, “The weather forecast says it’s going to warm up.” My mind translated that to, “All the snow is going to melt away.” By the second day, as the outbuilding roofs were crowned with more and more snow, I felt myself becoming more and more anxious. Sure, the snow was melting during the warmest few hours of the day but during the colder parts of the day the snow continued to fall upon us. The melting wasn’t keeping up with the falling. 

The third day I woke to snow getting deeper behind Grandma’s car. I began to wonder, as I viewed our driveway, what I would do if I needed to get from the top of your little hill to the highway. Our driveway is fairly long. I stress when we aren’t easily accessible to first responders. 

To keep my mind busy, I was doing lunch dishes and gazing out the kitchen sink window down at the highway just below our little hill. Vehicles were winding by doing half the speed limit following a pair of snow plows busily sending slushy snow flying into the gully beside the road. Then a snow blower chugged up the road slowing the traffic even more. I was surprised to see the red snow blower turn into our driveway. I thought, “Sure wish I had one of those, I’d be doing a bit of snow removal myself.” 

I hollered at the folks, “There’s a snow blower in our driveway,” I thought it had simply pulled in to let the faster cars pass. I was pleasantly surprised to see that red machine turn up our drive and watch snow start spewing out its discharge chute, “And it’s clearing our driveway.”

“Who is it?” Grandma asked. I didn’t know, so I didn’t answer. 

“I’ll bet it’s Trapper,” Grandpa answered her. Sure enough, our neighbor to the south noticed we hadn’t plowed ourselves out and made himself available to do the job. I can’t begin to describe my joy. The neighbors were looking out for my folks. 

Grandpa went out on the back deck as Trapper reached the top of the driveway and turned off his snowblower. “How you doing, Truman?” Trapper asked. 

“Not so good. I’ve been sick,” Grandpa told him. 

“I figured it was something like that,” Trapper replied with a grin then turned on the snow blower and continued clearing out the snow. After he’d finished opening up our driveway, he sat down with Grandpa at the kitchen table; Grandma served hot chocolate and cookies, and the two of them had a fine chat.