by B Nimri Aziz Feb 19, 2025
Just a regular old fashioned plow
So thrilled was Big Jim with his new car accessory that when he spotted me nearby, he called me from his truck window to inspect the massive apparatus. That was late autumn, three years ago. I watched him at the wheel, levers moving tentatively in his hands swiveling it right then left, up then down. He wasn’t showing off, just testing the tool he’d purchased, clearly thrilled by the technology. It would make work not just easier but exhilarating.
Yesterday, the fourth time in a week, Jim’s maroon pickup rolled up my driveway, that three-year-old plow fully in his control. From my doorway I confidently watched him ease that enormous blade fixed to his truck to within a foot of my car’s bumper, artfully pushing the snow clear. Jim pauses and from his window shouts the weather forecast and conditions along Highway 17.
Jim seems delighted his snow plow is in demand.
Sorry ladies, but I don’t think we can match the pride of plow operators arriving at our streets and driveways this winter season. Jim has a downright heroic gleam in his eyes as he peers over the wheel of his vehicle, his fingers deftly on knobs easing the plow on. He was out at 9 a.m. Sunday pushing aside – we can’t yet say pushing away – Saturday’s snow. “I want to get this clear before leaving for church,’ he called as he slowed to greet me.
Didn’t he know the dozen snowed-in households could manage for another day? (And Monday a holiday.) It seems his heroic impulse overruled, and he was up before 8 readying his machine!
Heroism is the only word for Jim’s devotion. There’s gallantry too. He pulls his vehicle forward, then back, swinging to the left, then around – a quiet delight spreading across his face. Later, passing down our street I noticed his handiwork; he even cleared driveways of non-residents! When I mentioned this excess to a neighbor, he replied how, when the plow is attached, the rest is simple. No, I retort: it’s more than convenience, more than courtesy too.
Normally any early morning machines annoy me. But winter plows are exempt. The grinding roar of a snowplow is one I don’t mind waking me. Even at 5 or 6 a.m. That’s when the municipal plow is audible a mile away. From under my blanket, I purse my lips with satisfaction, waking to that howling. The earth trembles long before the plow reaches the corner of my street, its growl rising as it nears. Backup sirens ensure I’m fully awake.
I don’t peer out to catch the driver’s face, to wonder if it’s a woman. However many school bus drivers today are women, I somehow doubt if they sit in the cabins of these rumbling machines. Not because women can’t manage, after all, plows are all hydraulically run nowadays. No, we’re not there because we may not appreciate the heroism of the job. What do you think?
