On the first snowy morning of the year, I walked right through my garage to the driveway to clear snow off the car – a task that would have been totally unnecessary if I had just put the car into the garage the night before.
And then on my way to Hyannis, I noticed that along one entire mile every house had a garage, but not one person had put their car into it. Each homeowner had a snow-blasted car in the driveway that was going to have to be brushed, scraped and warmed like a show dog.
Why the heck do we choose to make our lives harder, not easier?
Granted, snowy mornings on Cape Cod are sometimes a surprise party. And some of us – aka me –are lax about reading the weather report before we go to bed. But the real reason I had not put the car in the garage was because I had decided that the snowfall would be too inconsequential to justify moving the wheelbarrow and the tomato cages and the jumble of boots and the packing boxes and the packages of paper towels that take up major car real estate.
So, instead of simply hopping into a snow-free car and pulling out into the driveway, I had to wade through 5 inches of snow to clean it off, clearing the wipers and the roof and the hood and all those places like the headlights that the police warn you about. Pro tip: Use a push broom not that weenie little snow brush.
I’m sure the car makes the nice guy who plows my driveway crazy. C’mon lady you have a garage, for heaven’s sake make my job easier. Yet, I persist.
So, tell me, Cape Codders, is this some kind of New England masochism? What is it about us that makes us ignore the fact that we have a perfectly dry place to put the car?
In warmer states, it’s logical to use a garage for only storage. Southern Californians, for example, don’t have snow. And they rarely have significant attic storage (too hot perhaps) or basements, partly because of earthquake risk. But here in New England, some of us have basements or cellars, attics and a garage, and we still don’t put the car into it. Our garages are filled with so much stuff, they are just yard sales waiting to happen. Meanwhile, the car is in the driveway, subject to cold and snow and ice like an orphan in a Dickens novel.
For my first 40 years here, I didn’t even have a garage. We had a barn. But if you had ever parked a 4,000-pound SUV in it, you would have quickly found yourself in the lower level. Instead, when snow was forecast, we backed the cars into the driveway in the hope we would avoid paying the plow driver and could just ram the 4-wheel drive through the drifts. Based on experience, this is not a good trick if there are more than eight inches.
So there were plenty of winter mornings when I trudged out to a cold, snowy car and begged for a garage. Now that I have one, why can’t I keep it tidy enough to accommodate the car? Is this related to other Cape Cod-isms, like leaving Christmas wreaths up until March? Or never shoveling the front walk? Well, we never use the front door anyway so it’s easy to forget about the wreath, and why shovel the front when we only use the back door? But some Cape Codders don’t even bother with the back walk either, based on the presumption that within 24 hours the temperature will go up to 42 degrees and melt it. Hey, often they are right.
The last time it snowed, I was shoveling the driveway because it wasn’t quite enough for the plow guy to be out. When I was about halfway done, two teen boys showed up with shovels. They were working the neighborhood and had just done the house next door.
We quickly came to terms for them to finish the driveway. But about two minutes after they had finished and walked down the road, a heavy snow squall – wind, fog, big flakes – dumped another 2 inches or so in about 20 minutes. So when it calmed down and the sun returned, I went out again and started cleaning up the walks. Again. Bless their hearts, the boys returned. “We said we’d get it clean; so we are,” one said and got to work.
Really, it’s enough to restore faith in human beings. And next time I’ll ask them to clean off the car.
