by Esther C. Baird, first published in the Ipswich Local News, March 30, 2023
Well, it’s March. The season of sand. Road crews scatter it like tiny beaches around our inland towns to deal with that ever-tricky late-season snow.
The sand — maybe more than the snow — threatens to break me. Perhaps in solidarity, our snow blower, in fact, did break. And this matters, because our driveway is made of an unplowable surface.
I know, I know. You know some guy who can plow tricky driveways. I promise that we don’t qualify.
And to make it more fascinating (irritating?), our house was built and originally lived in by a Bruins NHL player who apparently never had to be anywhere early in the morning when it snowed overnight.
Maybe, if you are a Bruins player, you have Zamboni fairies who clear your ill-conceived driveway? Or you just toss on your skates and glide to work?
Bottom line: we can only clear our driveway with a snow blower. Fine.
In the summer, over at my family’s camp in the Adirondacks, I’m in charge of mowing the lawn.
A snow blower is not very different. Both are self-propelled and chew things up. One shoots grass into neat lines, and the other shoots snow into your face unless you position it just right.
One is done to enjoy the warmth of the great outdoors, and the other is done to just get out of your house during the long dreary winter.
One makes me feel happy and accomplished, and the other makes me brood and think dark thoughts about ice hockey as a sport.
Also, when using it last year, I had a small run-in with a wall. It caused the blower to buck and whiplash up my arms, which didn’t improve my view of snow blowers (or the entire region of New England).
To be fair, it’s my husband who does most of the snow-blowing. And his opinions are less … extreme? Hostile? But this last storm, he was stuck on an all-day call, and it fell to me.
The past few times, I’d pointed out that the blower was sticking a lot on the right, making boulder-sized deposits. He cleaned it out, but it still pulled right and deposited clumps. So this last storm, when I fired up the blower, I definitely felt it pulling.
Going up our steep driveway, it was less self-propelling than I preferred. Turning it took my full body leaning in. I was Sisyphus of the snow.
My husband’s office overlooked our driveway, and he texted me, “The snow blower is pulling to the right, and I think the right side is clogging.”
You don’t say.
He continued. “I think the shear pin has snapped, and really we’re just pushing the snow around on the right side.”
Well, that is certainly what it felt like I was doing. Pushing snow with a giant, loud, vibrating combustible engine — aren’t snow days fun?
Once we were able to get out, I headed down to Dawson’s in Topsfield, where they sold everything including “this thing.” I showed a picture my husband had texted me to the guy at the register.
He nodded and whisked me to an area full of tiny boxes.
As I stood there, a guy walked in looking recently snowblown. He lifted his chin towards me. “Shear pin?”
I shrugged my shoulders like I had a clue, “What else?”
He nodded appreciatively.
The clerk asked me what size pin I needed. Given my husband’s ‘go big or go home’ philosophy when it comes to home improvement, I answered, “the biggest one you have.”
The guy nodded again, “No point in a small snow blower.”
No point in any snow blower, I wanted to reply.
Instead, I agreed. We snow blowers stick together … much like the ridiculous, right-sided clumping snow.
My husband confirmed that our shear pin had broken. Perhaps — and it was just a theory — when I had driven it full-throttle into the wall. Perhaps what had felt like bucking had actually been the shear pin, you know, shearing off.
Because once he fixed it, our snow blower shot snow basically across Boxford.
Shooting it across the sand, across our unplowable driveway, and hopefully shooting it to the end of March.