March 29, 2024
Column

Where are all the teen-age snow shovelers?

While shoveling the driveway after one of our many recent storms, I looked over the vast expanse of whiteness blanketing the world and sensed that something was missing from the scene.

All and up and down the streets my neighbors were bent low to their exhausting labors, a chain gang of panting homeowners all throwing up little clouds of snow and ice from their walkways and driveways and from around their buried cars.

Some of them were about my age, but a few had passed middle age long ago. It seemed strange to me that these older folks still had to be out there in the terrible weather, risking heart attacks to clear their driveways.

Where were all the kids with the shovels? Where were the teen-agers, with their elastic lungs and their parents’ new snow shovels, who used to roam the streets in winter to make money doing a chore that their elders would probably pay anything to be free of?

Where were the ruddy-faced young capitalists who once went door to door to ask, “Hey, mister, you need somebody to shovel your driveway?”

I no longer require such a service, of course, having two teen-agers of my own to help. Whenever they’d squawk about the work, I’d tell them that it was one of the reasons their mother and I had them in the first place, why we fed them all that healthy food over the years – to shovel snow and mow the lawn. Didn’t they know it was all part of the parent master plan?

“Oh, I see,” my son would say as he trudged out the door. “Kind of like raising dumb farm animals?”

“Not at all,” I’d counter. “We also spend a fortune to educate you so that you can get high-paying jobs and support your parents in their retirement.”

I’m sure the itinerant shovelers could still make a pile of money this winter, now that everyone but skiers and snowmobilers are already fed up with the abundant snow and ice and have begun to dream of spring. Yet having seen no wandering laborers so far this season, and none for several seasons before this, I have to conclude that teen-agers don’t believe there’s money to be made in shoveling anymore.

If so, they’re missing out on a great business opportunity.

When I was 13 or so, desperate for spending money during the school year, we kids thought of snow as white gold that dropped from the sky. Unlike mowing the lawn on a warm, summer evening, a task that some people might even enjoy, shoveling snow in an icy wind has always been one of life’s most detestable chores. It makes adult hearts chug, lungs scream, muscles ache and backs spasm. And back then, we youngsters made that hatred pay off. It was supply and demand in its most natural form – God supplied the snow, and we eagerly filled the demand to remove it.

Fortified with oatmeal – my mother was a firm believer in oatmeal, and cooked up a bubbling pot of the gluey stuff every winter morning of my youth – my brother and I would hurriedly shovel our own driveway and then head out to find the profitable ones.

The commuters were the first on our list. They were always in a desperate hurry to get to work, and had no choice but to pay us to have their cars dug out so they could get to their trains on time. It was almost like extortion, but legal.

The older people were usually good for the biggest jobs – the full driveway treatment, along with walkways, porches, and maybe even a path out back for the dog. Having endured a lifetime of labor, they were often grateful customers who added a cup of hot chocolate to the bargain.

When my parents won a little red snowblower in a church raffle – a snowblower still something of a novel contraption in those days – our business took off. We tore through driveways, eating up snow by the ton, and even branched out into other neighborhoods. Unfortunately, our dreams of prosperity screeched to a halt after just two seasons when I ran the little snowblower into a curb and mangled the blade.

Snow removal was never quite as entertaining after that.

Now that my own children are preparing to go off to college, I figure I’ll be looking for a couple of eager, shovel-toting youngsters one day when the old arthritis starts to kick in. I hope there are a few of them around by then. I’ll pay well, and will throw in all the hot chocolate they can drink.

And if we’re not home when they come knocking, I really hope it’s because we’ve already moved for the winter to that condo in Florida that our highly successful children have so thoughtfully bought for their retired parents.

That’s our plan, at least.


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