Snow Combat

Snow Combat

By: Mark Edward Rom

A cold icy wind hit Carl as he left his warm house behind and stepped out onto his front porch. He glowered at the snowdrifts that blocked his path and tried to vaporize them with his sheer force of will. His gray Toyota Camry sat parked in the driveway half buried by heaps of thick white fluffy snow. Carl spitefully cursed the snow, upon the ground and falling from the gray clouds high above in the sky as he bitterly grabbed for his shovel that to his surprise was not where he thought he had left it. His hand clutched onto nothingness beside him. During the winter months Carl kept the main equipment, which he used against the elements like snow and ice, on the porch for quick and easy access. Necessities such as an oil drum filled with a mixture of sand, gravel and salt, an 11ft long snow brush with added ice scrapper in the shape of an ice pick, and the main weapon of choice his all mighty snow shovel. All of those items were suppose to be on the front porch within his grasp should he ever need them but they were not in their rightful places. Carl had placed them all into the shed in his backyard because the weather this winter had been so mild that he had decided such things were not needed at the start this season. Carl could have kicked himself right then and there for being so foolish as to assume that Jack Frost and Old Man Winter we're not going to put up much of a fight. He shouldn't have presumed that they wouldn't attack with their greatest weapons. The white terror known as snow and the clear cold stuff known as ice. It was still early in the month of November. Carl should have foreseen that they had just been delaying their forces for a later attack. Brutal Old Man Winter and cunning Jack Frost had been crafty strategists this year.

The warm weather had just been an false tactic, setup so that no one saw through the deception until it was too late to react, even Carl. He spotted his other neighbors as they too faced the cold and icy challenges of winter. He heard Mr. Thomas's snow blower as it plowed forward and threw snow six feet into the air, off his driveway and onto another. He noticed his other neighbor Kent with his giant muscles and Olympian body, shovel a huge clump of snow with one hand then toss the contents indifferently into the middle of his front lawn. Carl noticed Giovanni, his other neighbor from across the street, walk out of his house in a white shirt, a pair of black boxers and fuzzy blue slippers. He waved at him and Giovanni waved back, took one look at the snow drifts that had collected across his driveway, blinked twice, shivered, shook his head, then grumbled something in Italian and stomped back into his house.

"That's what I should have done. Carl muttered with a small grin. However I have places to go and things to get done today. Where has all the rainy weather gone?"

Carl sighed as he hiked up his black leather boots, clasped his coat around his torso and stretched his warm toque firmly over his head. Rain was a lot better than snow for at least after it rained he didn't have to do anything with it. The rain went away all by itself. With snow it took a few days for it to melt and even afterwards you'd be lucky if you didn't end up with ice as hard as stone to deal with. Carl inhaled a deep breath of the cold crisp morning air as he stepped out into a rather large white snow bank that resembled a sand dune. He trudged through the chunky wet stuff towards his backyard gate to his shed so he could retrieve his gear for the long battle ahead. It was going to be tough to remove all the snow but Carl felt confident that he could do it as he lifted the latch and pushed his way through. He even wondered about whether he would be able to go help Giovanni afterwards with removing his piles of snow. Carl felt empowered this morning, like he could take on anything Jack Frost and Old Man Winter threw at him and throw it right back. As he released the lock on his shed and opened the old wooden door, Carl got a wave of optimism. He grabbed his thick snow gloves, his big metallic shovel and slung the oil drum over one shoulder then looked out across his backyard pathway. He would start shoveling here, work his way up to the front driveway and then uncover his snowed in car. The sun peered over the gray clouds and beamed brightly upon him as Carl took up the first shovel full of snow. With a wide grin stretched out upon his face he began his work on breaking apart the large blockade before him. It was a great day for a round of snow combat.

End.