True Snowblower Confession

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, ol' JimBobby sorta fell off the green wagon jest now. Here's the story.

It started snowin' in my neck o' the woods 'round 6 last night - big flakes comin' down pretty heavy. After Ma an' I come back from the 8 o'clock 2 mile dog walk we do every night, I shovelled some o' the sidewalks fer 20 minutes, or so.

This mornin', you couldn't hardly tell where I shovelled last night an' I reckon a few inches o' the wet an' heavy slushy kinda snow was piled up. After Ma left fer work, I got out an' started shovellin' an' I had most o' the sidewalks done but none o' the bigass laneway goin' back beside the house t' the little ol' garage where there ain't any car. I was plannin' t' maybe jest cut a pathway an' a tire track in case somebuddy drives in like they do a lot.

Anyway, ol' Bill from across the road was goin' up an' down his side o' the street with his snowblower clearin' off the neighbours' walks like the good neighbour he is. When he got across from me, he steered his rig over an' asked me if I was needin' the exercise or could he do me a favour an' blow out my laneway.

Well, here comes my true confession.

I looked at that there chuggin' 6HP gas blower an' I'd been shovellin' fer a fair while already an' I ain't no spring chicken bein' I was born back in the 1940's like ol' Bill so I didn't hafta think too long an' hard on his offer. About 5 or 6 minutes later, I give my good neighbour a smilin' thankee kindly an' off he went t' do the lezzie gals' laneway next door.

I was still shovellin' fer 20 minutes or so after Bill got done an' the blower don't take it down t' the bone so I scraped over the part he blew away. I worked up a dang good sweat but I got a strong ticker fer a guy pushin' 60 an' this was about the 5th shovellin' session fer me this year. This was the first time the snow was heart attack heavy an' also the first time this year Bill come over with a neighbourly offer.

So, like we was sayin' in the comments that other boog story I wrote up on Ginty's lightbulb law, commonsense is what prevails. If I was t' refuse Bill's neighbourly offer an' maybe stand there an' tell the ol' boy he's pollutin' the air an' shut it down - dang! - that'd be bad neighbour stuff an' Bill's too nice a feller fer all that. We been buddies fer years an' when electionvote time comes 'round, I'll give ol' Bill some Green Party literature an' maybe a pitch.

I feel a little bit guilty fer havin' that snow blowed but, all-in-all, I figger I made the commonsense choice.

I was readin' Earth Mother Lizzie May's boog the other day. She was boogin' about how she gets around an' she was ridin' the Greyhound from Trawna (centre o' the universe) t' Guelph. Yeow! I wonder how many other federal party leaders'd take the grey dog. All the same, some radical eco-warrior or some finger-pointin' throwback might say Lizzie should only walk or ride her bike or maybe drive a dog team or snowshoe or ice skate or cross-country ski.

Now, ridin' a bus ain't as pure as ridin' a bike but when it's wintertime in Ontariariario, it's the commonsense thing. T' my way o' thinkin', allowin' the neighbour t' do a good deed is commonsense, too.

JimBobby