Keeping up with the Neighbors

I've written before about the differences between living in the country and a subdivision. This is just one more example of the pressure to keep up with the neighbors in suburbia.

Living in the country, there's often so much snow in your driveway that you don't even try to get through it, much less blow it off. Especially if the 100 acres around your house are farm fields... the wind blows the snow to the first obstacle which is usually the farm house. Or, if there are just a few inches of snow, you don't worry about it. We both drive big Fords that can power through a few inches of the fluffy stuff.

The only time I had a real problem was when I got stuck on top of rail road ties (our driveway was lined with them) and none of my van's tires were touching the ground. I was pulling in, off the road, and there was quite a bit of snow in the driveway... at least enough to hide the rr ties. I miscalculated the location of the driveway and, at full-speed, drove right up onto the first tie and didn't stop until I was completely on top of it, van teetering to and fro. The AAA tow truck guy made it out the next day and, after about five minutes of laughing at me, drug my van back off and onto terra firma.

Here in the 'burbs, if you don't plow, you don't get invited to the summer cookouts. Some neighbors are so anal about it, they start blowing as soon as the snow starts coming down.

Our snow blower is a huge industrial model. Much too large for a girl to handle ;-) Bruce always gets the snow blowing duties.