With the Help of Our Great Neighbors

A few years ago, we wanted to help the kids out and so gave them our old, 1977 Suburban with plow blade on the front. Our good neighbor on the east has a heavy equipment construction business and had told us he would be glad to keep us plowed out in the winter time. It seemed like a good situation, and indeed it has worked out well.

These neighbors are the ones who had been gone for a week before this latest spring snowstorm hit. We were left the keys to their plow truck so we could keep our road and theirs open if it snowed while they were gone. 'Course, wouldn't ya know it, the snow that came was in great quantity, of a texture resembling wet cement, and plain and simply, too much for the regular plow truck. Roy did everything he could, working for hours and hours until he finally got our neighbor's road open (well, passable anyway, at best) on Wednesday, the day they were expected to arrive home. He got the plow truck stuck really badly twice (the grease-like snow literally pulled or threw him off the road into the ditch), but both times I was able to pull him out with our Suburban. Other times in the course of the day, he shoveled himself out of the cement-like muck at least ten to fifteen times. We never did get our driveway open, but there is an exit/entrance through our back yard/woods area over to our neighbor's that has come in handy on more than one occasion and that (thankfully!) we were able to push through and use.

Knowing D and M would have their truck full of luggage, etc. when they got home, and the fact that they would have had a LONG trek through 16" of wet, heavy snow, made us push to make their drive passable for their arrival. Once Roy made it into their yard, he shoveled a path up to and across the deck to their side door (that I posted a picture of on Wednesday) so they could get in the house. D called when they arrived Wednesday night and thanked us profusely for enabling them to drive in but laughed saying he had had to shovel the deck again before they could get in as more snow had slid off the roof and made another small mountain in front of the door.

Early this morning, after D gave Roy a quick lesson on operation of an ASV, they attacked our driveway and yard with two pieces of D's equipment that had a little more clout than the plow truck. D took care of our driveway while Roy cleaned the yard area.

Here's Roy bucketing the snow from behind our house.

Every man is happy having his very own great, big Tonka toy to play with.

I truly don't know what we would have done about clearing away all the snow without our good neighbor's help. Waiting for it all to melt would have taken a loooong while. Thank you, thank you, thank you, dear neighbors!