I know this is another complaint made about the elements, but if you just endured the same week I did, you'd have a lot of whining to do yourself. I simply want to know the idea of the wing truck. What's a wing truck? Well. to be honest, I'm not even sure I'm calling it what it really is. I'd heard it referred to as a wing truck so that's what it is ... at least to me. The most important aspect I want you to realize is that I don't give a flying frog what it's called. I do not respect this vehicle and I think it's sole purpose in life is to make homeowners miserable for the purest sake of evil doing. Let me begin my rant ...
The wing truck is the same plow truck they plow the roads in the winter time with, except they add on that extra long plow blade (which resembles a long wing ... get it?) and clip back the snow banks. When asking some people about the reason they do this, I was told (as in a detailed explanation) that it's so I can see over the banking at the end of my driveway. While this is true for the explanation's purpose, it missed one very important detail. All the wing truck really did was knock the snow off the banking that I cannot see over and place it in front of my driveway. So while it serves one beneficial purpose, it also has an underlying side effect that is rather problematic. I can't get into my frickin' driveway. This snow that is knocked off the snowbank and into the driveway isn't exactly the fluffy, white variety that is easily moved by a plastic bladed shovel. Actually, I don't believe it can even be classified as snow any longer. It's not white. You cannot make a snowman with it ... at least with the more common definable shapes of a conventional snowman. You can't make snow balls with it, although I've discovered you can chuck the smaller more manageable pieces at wing trucks driving past your house and do some pretty extensive damage to windshields and all. Yeah ... I'll be starting my community service next week. Washing wing trucks as my fate would have it. Irony is not without a sense of humor. Back to the snow ... er ... ice chunks. Whatever. I got home from work twice this week after spending many physical hours there only to have to snow-blow the snow that had fallen that day. First I'd also like to add the fact that I did not order this snow on Sears.com or even Walmart.com. A plowman I had a confrontation with at my last residence made the mistake of telling me that I need to "keep my snow in my yard." That didn't settle too well with me. Make mental note to yourself ... never say something stupid to a man shoveling his yard with a metal shovel. I'm glad that community service stint is over, though. And that I moved. I was beginning to get "noticed" in that town all of a sudden everywhere I went. As you can tell, it's hard to stay focused on the subject matter and I duly apologize. I spent a few hours on each one of these evenings snow-blowing and shoveling the girth of the fallen debris up on the ever growing snow bankings. Indeed the snow-blower was becoming ineffective since it couldn't even reach over the banks when I got close to their edges. But when it's 8:00 (or later) in the evening and I'm all out of steam, I'm not going to climb the snow banks and perform my own winging service with a hand shovel if you can understand that. The very next day, however, I leave for work again with all the aching muscles in my arms and legs reminding me that I'm middle aged and that many middle aged people die in winter performing the same exact service that I did the previous evening from heart attacks.
Nonetheless, I looked proudly at the work I had completed and set off to work with a degree of satisfaction. Not even at the end of my road, I saw it. The wing truck. I saw what he was doing. I lied to myself and said ... No ... he won't mess up my yard. Or my mailbox ... which is another area I clear for my mail lady ... I used to deliver mail to HCR addresses so I'm compassionate to the rural mail carrier. No ... he will simply raise his blade when he drives by my house, I said.
I worked hard that day, too. I got home late that afternoon to the devastation. He submerged my mailbox in an avalanche of monumental destruction. He closed the walkway I purposefully makeshift to the mailbox with a three and a half foot tall wall of ice and road salted chunks of ... ice rocks. That's what they really are. The driveway was even worse. There was one small area where the height of the devastation wasn't too severe and I aimed my four wheel drive truck at it and turned the steering wheel at the same time I accelerated for torque. I almost didn't make it. Almost. In a way, I wish I hadn't. At least it would have made a better headline in the morning paper. Mad Man Who Cannot Get Into His Own Driveway Hunts Local Plowmen. Film at eleven.
Now, as I said, it's not like I can just rip cord the old snow-blower and come up to this ... ice rock and just blow it back up on the snow banks. It's too chunky, too heavy, too ... unsnow-blowable! It not only has to be dealt with BY HAND, it also requires a chopping action of sorts in order to knock the ice rocks into manageable sizes to throw ... back onto the snow bank from whence it came. Get it? The state ... the city ... whatever ... whoever ... has got me smashing rocks in my driveway into smaller rocks (now how many prison movies have we seen prisoners smashing rocks with hammers? ... can't I boldly say that I've been doing community service long before any crime was even committed?) so I can put them back to the exact same spot the wing truck had the nerve to knock them down from. You see ... that's the only place there's any room to put the snow. Back where it was before this wing truck came along to do whatever it is he's getting paid by my tax dollars to do. Am I the only person in the world this does not make sense to? For example ... let's say I had room elsewhere to put the snow that is plowed up in front of my yard from the roads all winter long every time it snows. Wouldn't I point the chute of the snow-blower in that direction when it's actually snow? Just because we're paying the driver of the wing truck to clip the snow banks in the entire village does not make any more room in my front yard to handle the mess he left in my driveway.
So, I spent three hours ... after there was no snow that day and I was excited about not having to be outside for a change ... yet I found myself outside, chopping, shoveling, chopping some more, relenting and trying the snow-blower in hopes it could manage something ... shoveled using the snow-blower as a shovel at times (anyone who has ever used a snow-blower before knows exactly what I'm saying here) chopped some more ... and opened my driveway and my mailbox ... and my weekend neighbor's driveway back open where there was once again a degree of satisfaction ... however ... there was also an underlying niggling and a twitch in the crick of my neck and one eyelid ... a vow of sorts ... to myself that I would exact vengeance if I saw another wing truck the next day. Why am I held as if a prisoner of my own village?
I will go outside the box here and proclaim that tax dollars can certainly be trimmed or even better spent. Perhaps even increased if need be. Can you say "snow removal?" Yes, that's expensive, but consider the benefit of not moving a stupid piece of the puzzle to another place ... especially when there's no other place to put that piece any more. The thing is, no one really knows how much snow we're going to get and every year the towns and cities try to each have enough money for their departments the tax payers all complain. I understand this. I can even live with the fact that each time I finish plowing the end of my driveway that regular plow truck comes by and closes it in. Why? Because that happens to everyone. I know for a fact that there is a conspiracy where the plow truck times each residence and knows exactly when each person is going to finish the end of their driveway. If they get ahead of schedule, a nearby outlook radios them and tells them to pull over out of sight and then announces to them when they've finished. I know this. My sister told me. And she knows all about conspiracies. All the way up to the presidency. But even when they come by after you're finished, the contents of what they spew into the end of your driveway is manageable. It's not part of some snow bank that's been baking in the sun and growing with each snow storm, getting all the road debris and the occasional mixed precipitation sprinkled on it and then refrozen. It's just road snow. You can snow blow it. You can even ignore it and just drive over it a couple hundred times and pack it down. I say to you, that the avalanche the wing truck litters across your driveway is much less manageable. It's simply clipping the chunks of ice and snow packed together from the snow banks ... into the end of your driveway ... for ... evil doing.
If you're one of the men or women who drive a wing truck, be warned. If you drive past my house, you better raise that blade high and pull away from the snow bank and keep driving by. If you have the nerve to clip the bank, then why not perform a community service of your own and drop that blade to the ground once your past the bank and in my driveway and carry that avalanche onto the next snow bank. I realize that wouldn't be as much fun for you, but it would be safer for the environment. Years after years of this kind of abuse has a way of eating at one's sanity. Just ask my sister.
Jody L. Campbell
