The day the preacher and I shovelled the street

On March the forth and March the fifth, 1999 Rochester New York had over 48 inches of snow, the rude ending to what had been a fairly easy winter, indeed. That Thursday it started early, as I was driving to work at five AM for a stupid meeting the snow was already going sideways and I thought to turn back towards home, but pressed on like all good soldiers. At eleven AM, many people from the C shift were still stuck in parking lots, so I drove with Chris Glover home. Chris lives on the way and his truck was stuck, so we crawled up Lake Avenue to Lyell in bottom, low, low gear in the Pathfinder. Up Lyell Avenue to Howard Road where Chris jumps out, me continuing all the way up Chili Avenue, up Arnett Blvd. to Woodbine Avenue. A left to Trafalgar (my street), where I get stuck right in the middle of the street in a five-foot drift.

Stuck, damn it, stuck right in the middle of my own street after coming ten miles through a blizzard.

It took me an hour of shovelling to get my truck over to the side of the road and I had to leave it there as the street was buried with snow. The alarm was on.

I think the official amount of snow for that Thursday was about thirty inches, and so, Friday was a shovelling day. The roads were all closed, officially, so shovelling it was which took most of the day.

The driveway, wide enough to get out, the path for the mailman to bring us our bills, cleared, and we were at the ready for the ploughs to fill in the end of driveways, which would have been nice had

The snow just stopped. BUT NO, it snowed another eighteen or so inches on Friday. Friday became a “keep even” shovelling, because Saturday would be a nightmare if you had to start with four feet of snow had you waited on, rather than worked.

In working my ass off to keep even with the snow, while seeing my truck still stuck down the street. I took a rest on Friday night, knowing the plows would be by soon and we'd be dug out, possibly tomorrow, and I could get my truck into the garage where it belonged.

Alas, Friday night brought NO sounds of ploughs and on Saturday morning, as you looked out over the street, the snow drifts connected both sides with about five foot drifts completely across. I could see my paths, cleared mostly, crashing into the drifts covering the street, and that's just about when I noticed “the minister”, Peter, standing in the middle of the street, beginning to shovel.

As I watched him, drinking my coffee with one hand, the other reached over and closed the blinds, and though I couldn't see him shovelling I heard the noise of his shovel upon the street. Dressing, I knew I was in for a rough day. As I joined Peter, the minister, in the street I said to him "what are you doing?" and he said,

”I’m shovelling the street”.

“Why?”

“People may have to get out”.

“You may be crazy you know”.

“If you start at one end, and I start at the other, we'll meet in the middle. It's easier that way and you feel like your accomplishing something”.

“You may be crazy you know”.

I went to the end of the street across from our house, and he started in front of his house, and we shovelled a path, two feet wide and about fifty feet long, meeting in the middle of the street.

The minister said “We're about twenty five percent done already, see”. It looked to me like ten percent and I said so.

Pretty soon, Tom from next door comes out and brings his snow blower, then another, Carlos from across the street, then more, more, until forty or so people are now shovelling, helping each other and the street is getting shovelled. In a bit the guy that ploughs the sidewalks comes by and ploughs the sidewalks, AND runs up and down the street a few times connecting the lower and upper sections of Trafalgar with a path down the middle. By now a television crew is making a story for the six o'clock news in, or rather on our ploughed street.

About two PM I got my truck out of the snow bank it had spent the past two nights in, and drove it down the middle of Trafalgar, the first car to make the passage since sometime Wednesday night. I went back to speak to “the minister” and could only thank him for reminding me, once again, of something I'd forgotten.

Impossible things can happen if you believe, and it only takes one person to believe to change everything. So do what you believe, and don't think of all the difficulties, issues, problems, the answers will come to you when you start on your impossible task. So start, start.

Thanks to you, Peter from Minnesota, the minister who reminded me what Joseph Butkowski had taught me so long ago. There is no such thing as impossible.