There are only two rules at Cobb Manor.

1. No grass mowing.

2. No snow shoveling.

The rules are violated only in times of national emergency. The grass is mowed only when the number of missing children and pets in the immediate neighborhood reaches double digits. I fill the mower up with gas once a year. When that is gone, the mowing is done for the season.

Snow shoveling, as we all know, is a highly dangerous activity. How many men suffer heart attacks every year while shoveling snow? We look upon that as an omen: Don’t shovel snow unless a life is at risk.

The front stairs are the notable exception. If any guests are expected to make a visit for a free meal or adult beverage, you must at least take the snow and ice from the front stairs. Then you shovel a direct path to the motor vehicle. That’s it.

The Cobb Manor motor fleet now consists of a snarling, ferocious, four-wheel drive, V-8 Toyota Tundra monster. Once the path to this behemoth is shoveled, you simply fire up the gas hog, put it in four-wheel drive and ram it into reverse. Once you make it to the street, you slam it back into the driveway, making a perfectly good track in the snow, which will last until the spring thaw.

This is what is known as the Cobb Manor “ram in, ram out” method. There is no longer any need to shovel the driveway or have it plowed for some exorbitant fee.

Drivers of four-wheel drive trucks complain most of the year about poor gas mileage. But when it snows, they drive in the teeth of the storm with a wide grin on their faces, blasting by neighbors in their poor, two-wheel drive vehicles struggling up the hill. They offer to go to the store for bread and milk in the height of the storm. For once, they do not complain about the gas mileage.

While the snow gets deeper and deeper in the Manor driveway, the neighbors are all embarrassed, like when they look at the lawn during the warmer months. Blue Eyes is mortified. She shoveled around her front and back entrance no less than four separate times during the last snowstorm. She shovels about the square area of an average football field every storm. She is out there shoveling while it is still snowing. The bad part is that she expects me to help her.

Admittedly, the system has a few flaws. Guests at Cobb Manor complain that their puny vehicles will not fit in the manly tracks of the mighty Toyota. I say let them make their own personal tracks using the “ram in, ram out” method, or let them shovel a place for themselves.

Cobb Manor theology insists that one will step over a 3-foot snow drift to get into the truck to drive downtown to exercise for an hour at the YMCA. Putting all that exertion into something as mundane as shoveling snow is just not allowed.

One way or the other, it will all be gone by spring.

No shoveling.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.