Planning Ahead

It was in the early 1970s.  I had decided to leave the Navy and strike out anew.  Nora, myself, and our four children were living in an ancient farm home outside the hamlet of Lisbon, New York that I had bought, believe it or not, for $2,000.  The home was situated on a 2 acre plot of land with half of it planted to an apple orchard.  We raised a good sized garden, and I had planted a strawberry patch for jam making.

It was during January and rather a warm evening, which sometimes makes for a really heavy snow storm, and that was the case this time.  The snow fell for several hours with those big old wet flakes that pile up the snow quickly.  Finally it stopped around an hour before midnight.  Nora and I had been watching TV, and I was yet wide awake.

I began to put on a jacket, hat and gloves.  Nora asked, “What are you up to at this hour of the night?”

I replied, “I’m going to go out and shovel the driveway of the two feet of accumulated snow.  That way I won’t have to get up early in the morning and do it so I can get out to go to work.”

I went out, picked up my shovel, and began the tedious process of shoveling the wet packy snow out of the driveway, a path some ten feet wide and a hundred feet or so to the road.  I had little more than started when Nora appeared by my side with her shovel and began working to aid me.  It took us maybe a half hour, working together, to clear the drive completely all ready for a quick exit the next morning.

We reentered the house, had some hot chocolate, and retired for the night.  Nora, always an earlier riser than I, woke me the next morning an hour earlier than normal.  She told me I should get up as our driveway was full of snow.  I said, “It can’t be, we shoveled it last night, don’t you remember.”

She said, “The wind came up overnight and has drifted the driveway full again.”

Sure enough, not only did I have to re-shovel it, but where we had tossed the snow to the sides the night before it was a foot or so higher than the surrounding lawn causing the drifting snow to fill it in a foot deeper than it had been earlier.  This time I not only had a foot deeper snow to shovel, but I had to do it alone as Nora had to get the kids up and ready for school as well as cook breakfast. 

The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray, or something like that.