Some days I think to myself, “My, we certainly have chosen a funny place to live!” Yesterday was one of those days. There was about an inch of snow on the ground when we woke. Over at our son’s farm there were a couple of inches. I went ahead doing what I thought anyone would do on such a day. After I ate my breakfast, I shoveled my walks and my driveway. There wasn’t much snow. The “job” took about 5 minutes. The snow was already melting, but a bit more was falling and you never know what the temperature is going to do on a day like that, so I thought it best to get the driveway and walks cleared before going on with the next part of my day.

Then I cleared all of the snow from the windshield, the hood and the roof of the cab of our pickup. Our truck is too long and too tall for the garage on our house, so it sits in the driveway. It fits right into our neighborhood because nearly every driveway in the neighborhood is filled with cars. Many houses have more cars than spaces in their garages. Others use their garages for storage of furniture and other items and park their cars outside. In the evenings, when most people are at home there are cars parked on the street in front of nearly every house.

Driving my pickup from my house to the farm, it was clear that the practice of shoveling snow is not a common art in our neighborhood. As far as I could tell, I was the only one who had done so. It seemed strange to me, because a few degrees drop in temperature could render sidewalks and driveways full of ice, but I guess snow isn’t all that common around here.

When I got to the farm, I was surprised to find out that the school had a two hour delay in start time. The kids were happily making snowmen and sledding down a pile of wood chips in the yard. Their place is pretty flat and they don’t have any real hills, but the pile of wood chips is tall enough that they could get a short run. I think their clothes might have been a tad wet when they went to school, but they showed no signs of distress as their mother bundled them into the car.

Later in the day, when Susan and I were returning from a short errand, we noticed a car stopped in the middle of the street. The windshield was fully obscured by snow, and it was obvious what had happened. the diver had gotten into the car and used the wipers to clear the windshield, turned on the heater and driven a block or so and then put on the brakes for an intersection. When that happened, all of the snow from the roof had slid onto the windshield and hood of the car. The windshield wipers couldn’t move the heavy snow, so the driver got out and was clearing the snow from the windshield with bare hands.

It appears that people around here not only don’t own snow shovels, they don’t seem to own hats and gloves, either. I confess that after more than a year of living here, our cars don’t have the kind of winter gear we used to carry in South Dakota. There are no sleeping bags in the back of our vehicles and our winter survival kit, with emergency food and supplies is currently sitting on a shelf in the garage, waiting for us to go on a trip. We do, however, have good snow brushes in both the car and pickup. There are tire chains in the tool box in the back of the pickup. There is a short-handled shovel in the back of the car. And we always have hats and gloves and jackets with us.

The snow hadn’t all melted by the time I went to bed last night, and as I headed to bed I took a look outside from a second-story window of our home. We seemed to be an anomaly in our neighborhood. Shoveling the driveway and walks made our home stand out from the others. It’s OK. We’re newcomers and we aren’t expected to know all of the local customs.

We used to joke about being newcomers when we lived in a small town in North Dakota. We lived there for seven years, but we decided, according to local tradition, that you have to stay in the town for three generations to be considered a local. Everyone else is a newcomer. We didn’t stay long enough to achieve local status. I doubt if that is the case around here. There is quite a bit of coming and going. There are always houses for sale in our neighborhood and we see moving vans and U-haul trucks in driveways almost every week.

One of the signs that we are becoming locals is that I renewed the licenses on our vehicles last week. They didn’t really expire until January, but the online renewal process is so easy and quick that I went ahead and we have already received our new stickers and registrations in the mail, with our new address. The stickers are on the vehicles and we’re good through January, 2022. The “Famous Faces, Famous Places” license plates have been made into a star that is hanging on the end wall of the machine shed at the farm. it glows when headlights shine on them and the star is kind of pretty when you drive up after dark.

The forecast is for a high in the mid forties with rain today, so I don’t think there will be any snow by lunch time. Those who didn’t shovel won’t have any problems with their driveways or sidewalks. You probably won’t even be able to see the small piles of snow that were on the edges of the driveway at our house.

I guess it is a good thing I sold my snowblower before I moved out here.