Snow Courtesies

I live in Minneapolis, and it snows here. That is very nearly tautological, but it is also true. If it snows enough, and it often does, something has to be done about the snow -- another all but tautological statement. Minneapolis has a peculiar ritual called the Snow Emergency to handle this task. Here's the way it works. The city declares a snow emergency. That evening, no parking is permitted on designated snow emergency routes. The next morning, starting at 8:00 a.m., no parking is allowed on the even numbered side of the streets. Finally, the odd sides of the street are plowed. Got that?

We live on a snow emergency route, which means as soon as somebody's decided that The Streets Must Be Plowed (hey, that's serious, here -- a St. Paul mayor lost an election because the streets didn't get plowed promptly enough), the car must be moved.

DDB was in California on a business trip, so I had the car to drive at my own whim until he gets home. There aren't very many places I want to drive to, but it does kind of make the car my responsibility. While DDB was in sunny California, it snowed. Like I said, it does that here. The city decided that the Streets Must be Plowed -- a pretty sensible decision seeing as we had gotten six inches or so. I certainly wanted them to plow the streets.

We live on a Snow Emergency Route. That means the car must be moved right away. I bus to work, and my start time is 10:00 a.m. I had until 8:00 a.m. to not be on the odd side of the street, so I made sure to park on the even side of the street since I had no intention of getting up early to move the car out of the way of the snow plows by 8:00 a.m. If the fine for being towed for the sin of Being in the Way of The Plow wasn't sufficiently intimidating enough, there's also the fine entertainment of explaining to DDB why his car got towed, a fact which will not please him, even if I've gotten it out of durance vile before he gets home.

Here's the tricky bit. Maybe you've already figured it out. I have to park on an unplowed street with six inches of snow on it. Preferbly without getting stuck enough that I will have to dig myself out. And all in all, I really don't want to have to dig myself into a parking space, either. Parking can be hard to find when 30% or more of the available parking is off limits. It took me a while to find a place to park. I finally found a spot, and it's still beautiful, pristine snow, which means that it's going to be a real bitch. It's a pretty good car, but unfortunately, I'm less than a good driver. By the time I'd managed to wrestle the car up to the curb, I was breathing hard and had adrenalin kicking through my system at a good clip.

And at last, the point of this story":

I came back the next day to move the car. Underneath the snow that had accumulated on the windshield, I could see a piece of paper. I was sufficiently curious that I scraped it off carefully enough that it didn't tear. It said,

Dear Car Owner,

Please do not park in front of the walk path. Our parents need to use

their walk path to get to their car.

Much Appreciation,

The Keehn Family

The Ahrens Family

Not park in front of a walk path? Excuse me? Everybody parks in front of them. It's just a little bit of pavement that goes from the sidewalk across the boulevard to the curb. (If you're not from around here, "boulevard" means the turf in between the sidewalk and the street. You know, the place where most of the trees get planted. I haven't got a clue why they call it that.) I was getting ready to give them my standard response to the "Don't park in front of my house again" notes that one occasionally acquires, but I gave it another thought. The letter wasn't really angry. Or only a little. And it wasn 't highly possessive. But the real kicker was that it was signed. It was signed. I looked again and realized that it was also written out on pretty stationary with a Christmas theme.

I took out a three by five postcard (we have some in the car) and wrote a short note back. Roughly, it read, "I'm very sorry to have blocked your walk path. To be truthful, I didn't even see it when I was parking. I was pretty focused on not getting stuck. I hope this hasn't been too inconvennient. -- Lydia Nickerson, 3721 Blaisdell. p.s. Freezing ink doesn't do anything for my penmanship."

I tucked it in the screen door and went along my merry day.

The next day, I got a card in the mail from an unfamiliar but close address. Puzzling. And it wasn't a Christmas-themed card. Extra puzzling. I opened it up and it said

Ms. Nickolson,

Thank you for response to our parking request. as our family. We were focused on our parents

We buried our father and stepfather last week. This has been a tremendous shock to both families and our main purpose right now is to take care of our mother. We mean no nastiness in our request. We hope you have a safe and happy new year.

Thank you

R. Keehns

stepdaughter of Dick.

Inside that card was another card. The card had a slate blue sea and clouds much the same color, and two raptors (or perhaps three -- is that cloud really a hawk?) It was dignified and attactive. It read,"In Remembrance of Richard Ahrens" Inside, the card was a picture of the recently deceased. "In memory of Richard "Dick" Edmund Ahrens, born July 8, 1933, died November 30, 2005, Minneapolis, MN. 32 year member of American Legion Post #1, 34 year member of Eagles, Aerie #34, Employed with Thompson Lumber Co. for 29 years. Dick was a fisherman, gardener, an excellent handyman, a computer buff, an exceptional doting husband and a loving father and grandfather. God will bless this man."

I hope he does.