We've Got To Go And Dig This Snow

Thank God for the ol' Cub Cadet!

That's become my go-to phrase whenever the snow piles up here in Syracuse. I'm 59 years old, and I've lived in either Central or Western New York for all of my life. It's safe to say I've seen some snow accumulations here and there during that span of decades. Over the last eleven years and counting, whenever our seasonal blanket of frozen 'n' slushy yuchh starts to pile high in my driveway, I've been fortunate enough to be able to rely on my Cub Cadet snow blower. When the snowing gets rough, my Cub Cadet gets going. I hope I can continue to rely upon it for a long time to come.

The Blizzard Of '66, my brother Rob and my Dad doing the work, the future blogger supervising 

I don't remember when I first became responsible for the task of clearing snow from the family driveway. It was probably in the late '60s, perhaps just prior to my tenth birthday in January of 1970, or shortly thereafter at the latest. I had a snow shovel and the will to use it. Well, maybe not the will exactly, but my parents paid me an allowance for such things, so shoveling the driveway was most definitely in my contract: shovel the driveway in winter, mow the lawn in spring and summer. The position came with room, board, health insurance, transportation, amenities, occasional sweets, and bonuses in the form of comic books. It was a pretty good gig.

As far as I recall, no one on our suburban block owned a snow blower. I don't think snow blowers were all that common in the '70s, at least in my experience. When I moved into my first apartment in 1980, armed with a college degree and a nascent career in the fast food industry, the clearing of snow was left to the maintenance department of my apartment complex. Freedom! This was not the case in my second apartment, a rundown tenement in Buffalo. Buffalo. Man, the city's name is practically synonymous with snow, and for good reason. My girlfriend (and eventual wife) and I were sometimes that rattrap apartment's sole tenants. Suffice it to say I shoveled an awful lot of snow during my Buffalo years.

Boost Buffalo, it's good for yoooooooou....

Back in Syracuse in 1987, we lived in another apartment complex, and were not required to shovel at all. Suburban living beckoned in 1989. We bought a house, paid a mortgage rather than rent, and assumed full responsibility for the things homeowners have to do. We bought a lawnmower. I bought tools and a drill, even though it may border on a public health hazard for me to attempt their use. A ladder. Paint and paintbrushes. A friggin' lawn seeder.

But no snow blower.



The prospect of owning a snow blower may not have even occurred to us. I had no experience with them, had never even tried to operate one, and it wouldn't have fit into our budget anyway. So: the shovel. Light snow, deep snow, even towering lake-effect blizzard snow, I continued to battle the elements with my shovels beside me...well, in front of me, actually. A push shovel and a traditional snow shovel. A Central New York winter wasn't gonna stop this lad.

In the summer of 2007, I developed severe back issues. These issues led to my back surgery on September 20th of that year. The emergency surgery went as well as it could have; I left the hospital using a walker, graduated to a cane, and soon returned to being able to walk unaided (albeit with an occasional limp). I hoped I'd still be able to handle light shoveling duties when the situation demanded it. But my days of shoveling heavy snow were effectively over.

Enter the Cub Cadet. Did I research the purchase? I have no idea if I did or did not. I found it, I bought it new, I had it delivered, and I taught myself how to use it.

The damned thing's been a boon from the heavens. Through winters great and small--make that winters awful and not-quite-as-awful--the ol' Cub Cadet has done the work, and I've given it the credit. It's had a few sporadic issues along the way, but Fletcher Outdoor in Cicero was able to deal with those issues as they occurred, keeping my Cub Cadet runnin' like a snow blower oughtta.

The Cub Cadet's most recent service was in November. We returned home late one evening, driving in from a memorial service in Ohio, to discover a full driveway. I mean, a really full driveway, with the snow deep, heavily-packed, and intimidating in its dismal, imposing density. We left the car in the street, ambled across the snow bank to get in the house, and I went to the garage to prepare the Cub Cadet for combat. It started, and it began the job. It could not finish it. I grabbed my shovels and cleared the driveway as best I could. I worked slowly, minimized the ache, and got the job done without keeling over.

I knew how old the ol' Cub Cadet was. I knew eleven years was a long time by current standards. But Fletcher Outdoor got it working again, good as new. It's still doing its job, and it's been called upon to do that job an awful lot this year.

It snows in Syracuse in the winter. I bet you already knew that. The winter of 2018-2019 has seemed more relentless than others, with Syracuse schools already above their allotment of snow days, and with the calendar indicating at least a little more winter still likely to come. There are other places that get it worse, but I couldn't deal with all of what we get without my Cub Cadet. Thank God for the ol' Cub Cadet.



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