Frazz by Jef Mallett for February 15, 2025

Whatever. I don’t shovel mine either. Too stinking old. Walk in the street if you don’t like it.

“His” sidewalk? I hate places that make public property the responsibility of private home owners. “Get off my sidewalk, and not on the yard!”

Kid’s still not very bright. Homeowner is probably elderly and unable to clear the walk.

A Caulfield moment?

Because all that passive aggressiveness is a lot less effort that walking over 100’ of snowy sidewalk.

I don’t shovel my sidewalk. But that’s because I live in Hawaii (and don’t have a sidewalk).

Hey kids – Get off my lawn!!! …where ever it is…

We’re supposed to shovel the sidewalk, the city doesn’t seem to enforce it. The whole neighborhood does it anyway, except for one house. One homeowner with a flag who seems to be concerned about someone stepping on a snake.

It was altruistic. Until ….

That ought to teach somebody something…

I’m glad I live in a city where they have sidewalk plows…Holland, MI…and downtown, they have a built in snow melt system!!! You can walk downtown and shop, hit the bars and restaurants, all winter long!!!

I’m fortunate to have considerate neighbors who, as I’ve gotten more arthritic and unable to do the honors, have expanded their shoveling to cover my walk as well as theirs. I’ll go out after they’re done and throw some salt around.

Frazz, don’t let Caulfield think that this is somehow okay…

Is he neighbors with Monty?

I hear ya Limpid Lizard…………

I am in my 70’s and snow blow 5-7 drives when needed (most are 100-140 feet long)—some are retirees like me, or a few are young mothers with new babies or young kids. But then again, I walk 6.2 miles on days I don’t clear snow.

Future president of an HOA.

Then I watered it down…

I live in Wisconsin, and what happens around here is that one nabor will go out at, say, 6 PM and clear the public sidewalk in front of his own place and 2-3 houses on either side of his, then at 8 PM someone from one of those will go out and clear the new snow off that same batch of sidewalks, and at 10 PM someone else does the same. And so on, as needed. Once you’re all bundled up and have the ol’ snowblower ready to rock’n’roll, it really isn’t that much more territory to cover. (Everybody’s still responsible for their own driveways and housewalks, tho.)

Often people clear the sidewalk in front of their homes, but not a path over the curb to the street, leaving pedestrians to climb 3-foot snowbanks to cross the road.

I grew up in a rural part of NC, where any sort of snowfall was a rare delight. Getting enough to make a decent-sized snowman was not a yearly event. When I grew up, it seemed like every household move took me further and further north, until I was living outside of Baltimore, where winter snows were a regular occurrence. One winter, I came back from a business trip to find that several days of snow storms had buried our front yard to the extent that it was completely flat across the yard and driveway, with her car parked in it. Not even its radio antenna stuck out of the drift.

My first words to her were, “Honey, we’re moving further south.” Which we did as soon as she found a research job in, of all places, the Research Triangle Park. I made sure to bring my snow shovel with me, which has a conspicuous place in my garage, as a talisman. I’ve never had to use it since.

My dad in his late 70s had to call an ambulance at 4 a.m. one time after shoveling snow off his driveway earlier in the day and spent a few days recovering in the hospital. After that, the teenage boys next door to them snuck over and, trying not to get caught, shoveled the folks off after every snowstorm and refused any payment once discovered. Great kids.