Plowing Snow

If I wrote this scene in one of my books, the woman would probably be my heroine.  Unfortunately, her husband would not be the hero.

The Prologue:  According to Weather.com - and we all know if it's online it must be true - our town got 13.5 inches of snow.  Enough to require some major shoveling.  My little tractor can't pile it high enough, so for big snows I hire a lady with a big plow on her pickup.

Chapter One:  I love this woman - she's careful, and a perfectionist.  She plows nearly a thousand feet of driveway, and does a good job.  But by the time she got to my house yesterday, she'd been plowing all day and her husband came to relieve her.  Turns out he's not so careful - she told him to plow straight back to the barn, but he turned sideways about twenty feet in front of it and ran into the culvert, getting stuck in the drift.  After watching him shovel around the truck from my nice warm house and seeing that he was still spinning his wheels, I walked out there.  I told him I could use my truck to pull his out.  The only problem was it was still in the garage with a 2-foot drift in front of it.  So I pitched in and we hand shoveled a path for the truck (kind of what I was trying to avoid doing when I called them, but oh, well.)  Then I backed up to his truck, he connected a tow line to each hitch, and as he floored the accelorator, I gently pulled.  No movement.  He urged me to give it a good jerk, so I backed up to put some slack in the line, then gunned it forward.  He revved the engine and his tires slipped and slid, but couldn't hold.  He urged me to give it an even harder tug.  I did, knowing exactly what would happen - the tow line snapped.  Not defeated, I pulled out my own tow rope and we hooked up again.  Another rev and a big tug.  This time the truck broke free and I pulled him out.  He thanked me, rather tersely, not happy about the whole experience.  (Ford F-150, one; Dodge Ram, zero.  Props to my tow rope, too.)

I'd like to say he went on to do a good job plowing me out, but that wouldn't be true.  He seemed afraid of the unknown dangers lurking close to my driveway and plowed a very narrow path to the road - not nearly the nice wide path his wife does for me.  And being afraid of the culvert, he left a wall of snow in front of my barn door.  Also, two minutes after I pointed out where a boulder was covered by snow, he ran his plow right into and over it, rearranging my landscaping with a loud scraping noise.  The windows were down and I heard his wife say, "She told you it was there!"  I have a feeling there was more conversation about the rock after they left. 

If I need the driveway plowed out again, I'll specify that I want the wife, not the husband.  I don't think he'd agree to come, anyway.