Large amounts of snow — well, actually, shoveling it from my sidewalk — always make me think of the late Ed Ebertowski, my next-door neighbor when we lived in Minnesota.
Even though he was well into his 70s and had a bad heart, he always was up and shoveling before me. I’d hear him scraping away as I laid in bed. And if I didn’t hustle to get started, he’d often shovel our front sidewalk, which caused me a fair amount of shame.
Eddie always sad he preferred shoveling to mowing the yard (and his yard ALWAYS looked better than ours) because he only had to do the former whenever it snowed and the latter had to be done every week. I’ve got great neighbors in Muscatine, but I will always see Eddie in my mind whenever I think of my next-door neighbor.
Brome Hill 