Rich Snow, Poor Snow

By now, many have seen pictures from the great blizzard of 2011 that hammered the Midwest last week. As I shoveled (and shoveled, and pulled something, and than shoveled some more) I thought about my boss’ comment on the blizzard:

“It could have been a whole lot worse,” he smiled.

It had me wondering what blizzard he encountered. It certainly wasn’t the same one I was still digging myself out of three days later.

Of course, Mother Nature doesn’t recognize prime real estate so as snows falls, it falls the same at my house as it does his house. It is only after it has landed that the distinction between rich snow and poor snow is made.

Now you might think all the frigid wind here has frozen part of my brain, and you might not be wrong, but I do believe snow is handled differently for the rich folk. And I say it with the confidence of someone who knows rich garbage is handled differently, so why not rich snow?

Garbage, I'm seriously going there. For me (and most everyone else), a big truck drives around the neighborhood and takes the garbage away. They are loud, they throw the cans around and they tie up traffic. All of which is unacceptable in my boss’ rich hometown.

And because the little patch of earth my boss’ garbage sits on is worth more than I make a year, his demands are met. His trash is taken away by men driving golf carts. Garbage men, no that isn’t a throwback to the eighties. At least not for the rich. For them, the garbage man was just there the other day. These men throw the rich waste into a trailer the golf cart pulls. It’s quiet, orderly and easily passable by drivers.

But wait, it gets better. I know, it doesn’t seem like it could get better than real men hauling garbage away in golf carts. In the rich downtown area where they have industrial trash, well golf carts would just be silly. Instead they have a fleet of their own exclusive garbage trucks. These trucks are white. Yes, white. And clean.

Back to the snow. Not so different from our loud, dirty garbage truck is its sister, the loud, dirty snowplow. Now I’ve never witnessed snow removal in rich-ville, but I imagine it is sort of mythical. Like snow elves come out, gather snow and skip away. They leave it all even, clean and beautiful.

I also believe these snow elves maintain the snow. Come on, you’ve seen the snow on the side of the road in your area. If it ain’t brown and nasty looking than you aren’t living with poor snow. Do I really need to say the rich aren’t subjected to having to look at that? At least not from their home!

And before you start thinking keeping up the snow maintenance is a big job for the snow elves, let me tell you something about the rich streets. See I think in addition to having street sweepers, they have street washers. I’d like to picture a modified Zamboni driving down them keeping them clean, but that would be taking it to middle class.

So maybe their streets aren’t as dirty as the ones I take to get home, but they do have some dirt. I mean, they have us (the collective poor, middle class) driving down their streets in our ten year old cars. I’m not sure what shocks them more: the dirt spread by our cars or the fact that cars still drive after two years.

Anyway, we don’t drive down their streets out of spite -- not usually -- we have jobs to do. Who else is going to mow their lawn, clean their house, wash their laundry, raise their kids?

So the dirt thrown up on rich snow by my people needs to be dealt with. And by dealt with, I mean either: a) fresh snow is sprinkled over it giving it a pretty, just snowed look, or b) if fresh snow isn’t available, well, I suspect they would take to some white spray paint for the same outcome.