Grumpy Young Man

It didn't seem like such a big request when it was made, or when it was accepted.

My daughter and her husband just went on vacation to Canada to visit friends for a few days. I expect, with her usual thoroughness, she thought of everything that needed doing before they left: mail, the cat, how to pack for the flight, all the usual.

Because it's winter, and they live in Minneapolis, she had to add one more thing to her list. Minneapolis has an ordinance that requires property owners to shovel sidewalks within 24 hours of the end of a snowfall. She asked my youngest, Paul, and he accepted.

No big deal.

By now you've likely seen the film of the Metrodome ripping and dumping some of its accumulation of the 17" weekend snowfall on TV. There was to have been a Vikings game there yesterday, if the Giants could manage to fly in from Kansas City, where their plane got diverted to Saturday because the airport here got shut down. Due to the roof collapse, it'll be in Detroit, tonight. Eleventh Avenue runs along the south side of the Dome, the angle most of the outside shots are taken from. About a mile later, it runs past my daughter's house. One can safely assume that 17" is close to their snowfall as well.

Now Paul is the most easygoing of my kids. He cheerfully helps out when asked. But yesterday was not a good day for him. While we didn't have nearly as much snow here, as it turned out, what we did have blew off the roof and onto the driveway, which his brother had cleared the evening before. He just hadn't bothered with the drift around and over his brother's car. We couldn't actually see it from the front door, so it looked like all the new shoveling remaining on Sunday morning was a couple of foot high drifts in the middle of the drive.

Paul timed himself accordingly. His plan was to quickly dig out of here, dig out his sister's sidewalks (corner house, 2 sidewalks), and then hit a movie or two on the way home. An hour later he was just getting out of here. He was not a happy camper.

It was getting dark by the time he returned. He reported that the snow he shoveled came to just over his knee. That was just the sidewalks. One street had been plowed, and the plow drift left behind was about shoulder height on him. He opened one of the curbs, but left the other to wait until the plow passed there as well. He didn't even bother with their driveway.

He spent another half hour in the den on the computer when he got home, looking for a movie he could still go to that appealed to him, and had a showing that qualified for matinee pricing. I hoped his mood would improve after he returned from that and had some of the venison crock-pot supper he'd helped prepare the night before.