The Tea Party Snow Job

Our conversation began agreeably enough. I had stopped at the hardware store to pick up a couple of chains for the chain saw that I had left to be sharpened. He saw my dandy aluminum cane.

"I know all about that!", he said. "I have one just like it at home!"

We showed each other our scars, almost, and swapped war stories.

Then, as often happens while making innocuous conversation, things turned ugly.

We speculated about the snow that was due to arrive that evening: last night. It arrived. Just a couple of inches, but good substantial, wet stuff. I said that my snow blower was still at the shop, being installed, and that it would probably not be home until well after the snow; maybe not until our second snowfall.

I joked about sharpening my snow shovel. He said that I should bring it in; that he would do it: he had just sharpened his.

"Huh?", I thought. "Sharpen a snow shovel? Why?"

"Yep!", he said, Minnesotan. "I take the snow right down to the concrete! I don't allow no snow on the driveway! No, sir!", he went on, "Nobody drives on our driveway until I have it right down to the concrete!"

I didn't ask where he lived. I didn't tell him where I lived. I don't want him moving in next door.

Instead, I log on to see what the weather is going to be, today and tomorrow. Maybe the snow will melt. And even if it doesn't, once the snow blower is installed on our little lawn tractor, I can take it over the driveway, and peel the snow right down to whatever the runners allow. Neither the snow blower nor I want to stop at every crack in the concrete to change elevations.

I think of it as a willingness to compromise with my adversary: take a little, leave a little. That is why I turned in my Tea Party membership card. They wanted me to take it right down to the paving.

Comments

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy. Those were skills to be learned and practiced. I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop. He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes. He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade. Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore. The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up. I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth. I knew how to do that. Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down. On the second try, aimi

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. Even when all they wanted to do w

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