A friend was mentioning just the other day that there doesn’t seem to be hordes of kids roaming the streets with shovels after snowfalls. He recalled how he used to make money by shoveling walks and driveways around his neighbourhood as a child. I’m sure some did. I wasn’t one of them.
To be honest, it was a tough job to get me to shovel at home when I was a kid. I certainly don’t recall doing it for fun and profit. This could possibly explain why I am not currently stretched out on the beach of my private island with someone to fetch me cold drinks with little umbrellas and fan me with pal fronds. If I had just shoveled driveways as a kid, that’s where I’d be.
Instead, when it snows, I get up, put on my warm clothes and start to move snow out of areas where I don’t want it, all the while scanning up and down the street, searching for the hordes armed with shovels. I never see them.
I have reached the point where I truly believe these hordes to be the stuff of myth and legend. In some far off place and time, long before snow blowers and plows walked the earth, they may have existed. I have my doubts, but they may have. Some say they have seen them, but there is a lack of hard evidence. I certainly don`t recall any expeditions unearthing fossils of gangs of snow removers when the frozen wastes retreat each year.
So as far as I can tell, the hordes of kids with shovels willing to clear their neighbourhood of snow are mythical creatures. Along the lines of dragons and unicorns. They may have existed, and I`d love to see them. I just don`t think it`s going to happen.
