SNOW

"Good afternoon, Bear.  Where were you this morning?  I thought we had a date for early morning
when I do my walk, such as it is."

"It's the bloody snow," said Bear, looking very disgruntled,

"But Bear, we don't have any snow," said Bum, looking puzzled.

"I know, Bum, you know, and my master's wife knows, but my master has gotten it into his head that snow is coming and he must be prepared, on behalf of his wife, because he'll be away doing that course he gives in the U.S.A.  When the snow storm hits, she'll be defenseless because he cannot find his snow shovel.  It must've been stolen, he said.   His wife didn't mention that she gave it to the Thrift as they haven't had snow in the Cove for years."

"Wait a minute, Bear.  Your master's wife doesn't look strong enough to shovel snow so what will she do with a shovel?"

"That's what she said," said Bear,"but the master came right back that the young fellow next door can do the shoveling, for money of course, but he'll need a shovel.  When the snow hits, there won't be a shovel to be found."

"Where did he get the idea that snow is coming, Bear.  There's been nothing about it as a forecast on the radio," said Bum.  Much ado about nothing, she thought.

Bear sighed and then said, "My master drove a friend of his up Seymour Mountain because his friend's girlfriend works there, has her car with her, but wanted the boyfriend to join her for dinner because she's getting a cut price because she works there."

"Your master surely realizes that they get snow at higher elevations, like on top of mountains, but it doesn't mean we'll get any snow at sea level," said Bum.

"He knows that, Bum, but he was more than half way back down the mountain when a small flurry of snow hit his windshield and he freaked  He had visions of snow coming and he would be out of town and the rest you know about his paranoi about having a snow shovel at the ready.."

"Anyway, he took me with him to find a snow shovel and we visited many hardware stores before we found what he wanted.  He thought perhaps two shovels would be best but the cost put him off. The salesman at the one place tried to talk him into a very expensive snow blower but even he wasn't that stupid.  I thought we would never get out of there and I knew we had missed our walk.  I started to have a real hatred for snow, I can tell you, Bum."

"That reminds me of an old joke about a snow shoveler that was making the rounds many years ago, Bear."

"It''hard to believe there could be much of a joke about shoveling snow," said Bear suspiciously.

"From memory, and it was a long time ago I read it somewhere, there was a man and his wife, (at the wife's insistence as I recall) who moved outside the City to a small place near a forest, a stream, and some looming mountains. It was like the place my niece, Mara, and her husband, Mike, found in Squamish, about an hour's drive from North Vancouver.

Their first night there, a few weeks before Christmas, was thrilling for both of them.  They were sitting, drinks in hand, gazing out the window at the softly falling snow flakes.  They felt blessed.

Over the next week, it kept snowing and snowing and snowing and snowing.  The man's belief that all that snow shoveling would keep him fit, began to pale.  He slipped on the icy driveway and hurt his back quite badly. 

Things started to deteriorate and there were several incidents with the snow plough operator who drove this route on a regular basis.  Every time the man shoveled his driveway  and the sidewalk fronting his property, the snow plough would come along and obliterate the end of his driveway and the sidewalk, with huge mounds of dirty snow.

Things got so bad, his wife left him and went to stay with her mother over Christmas and the New Year.  The man was glad.  This was all her fault and he hated her and he hated the f'ing snow and he particularly hated the f'ing snow plough driver.  The last incident with the snow plough operator got ugly.  The snow shoveler hit the snow plough driver with his shovel after the driver had the nerve to ask for a donation because of Christmas, and then threatened unmentionable things he was going to do to the driver with the broken shovel handle.

The police came, of course.  The snow shoveler was incarcerated, and not in a regular hospital.  He loves the little white pills he is prescribed but wonders why he is tied to the bed."

"As a snow joke, Bum, that stinks," said Bear.

"Maybe it's because you're a dog and never had to shovel snow," responded Bum. Bear said nothing.

"I hate to leave you on such a sour note so perhaps this message about snow I received recently from my niece, Mara,  will please you.  She enclosed a picture of the scene outside her window but, of course, I don't know how to include it here.  A high tech person, I'm not.  She wrote,"

                                                               ......


I awoke to the beginnings of a Winter Wonderland. I could already tell as I lay in the dark....by the muted, muffled sense of sound.  The landscape in layers of darks and whites....like an old photograph, and the stream's towering deciduous trees look like a filigree.  The only colours are the brick red shoots off the lilac tree, and the little Christmas lights, barely peaking from the coloured snow-laden Apple tree.


                                                             .....   


 "Very poetic, isn't she?: said Bear.

 






 







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