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I have a crush on snow plows. I know this is a bit unusual. I don't even have a crush on snow plow drivers, really, although I know that the plows don't drive themselves. Rather, I kind of have a crush on personified snow plows. Which, I think is probably worse.


It all started last year during an awful, messy snow storm that left people in Boston stranded on the interstate for hours and hours. The storm hit mid-day and I left work at the first visible flake.

[Aside: I successfully drove home in a blizzard my first winter here. It involved driving with my window rolled down and my head hanging out since my wipers didn't have the umph required to remove the snow from the windshield. Although it's not an experience I am anxious to repeat, I'm very proud of myself and I might tell this story every time someone talks about snow. Ahem.]

It was very early in the storm when the air is still clear and the flakes are still fairly dry and you can see the air moving over the street and swirling the flakes in eddies and streams. I was almost alone on the road and as I passed under the access road overpass, there were three snow plows lined up on the bridge.

They were waiting to be deployed, by whoever deploys snow plows (The Massachusetts Legion of Snow Plows?), out of the way, but with easy access to the Mass Pike so they could start clearing and salting as soon as there was any accumulation to speak of. It was very literally the calm before the storm. With hours if not days of work ahead of them, they were simply waiting.

That day, though, maybe twenty minutes behind me, all of the Boston Metro area left work en masse at the governor's direction and rushed home, making it really quite hard to plow the roads with so much traffic. Making it really quite hard to get home with so much un-plowed snow on the road.

But ever since then, I have felt very fondly toward snow plows. It might snow for two or three days in the winter, and the plows are immediately out and working. The key, apparently, is to start plowing as soon as it starts snowing, and not to stop.


Where I grew up, 1" of snow closed schools for a few days. Here, after a full day of snowstorms, single digit temperatures, and windchills around -10, I can safely drive to pick Kyle up from work so he doesn't have to walk home.

It's been snowing for the past 13 hours, since about 8:00 pm on Saturday night, and it's still at it. Yet the road in front of the house has been plowed several times already. I heard them in the night.