by Joe Paradis

Created on: December 02, 2008

Retiring the Snow Blower

Preparing for winter. It's a rite of passage here in New England. Finding those snow shovels you've buried somewhere in the shed. Hauling out that bucket of sand that's been sprouting a patch of grass over the last three seasons. And above all, making sure that the snow blower is ready to go before the snow flies. These are all tasks best completed in the fall while you can still feel your fingers and before icicles form on the tip of your nose. You did complete all that preparation ahead of time this year, didn't you?

Of course, you did. But not I! While I successfully uncovered the shovels and the sand in November, it was only a few days ago as we sit here in the middle of February that I rolled out the snow blower. And only because we were expecting the first real snowstorm of the late winter in less than 24 hours.

Now mind you, this snow blower is an old friend of mine. Twenty years ago, he entered our lives on a high note, when my neighbor and I chipped in $1,200 to purchase the old guy together. It was a shiny red Toro, with posi-traction wheels, five forward speeds, two reverse speeds, and an assortment of other manly options. It could slice a 24-inch wide path through the heaviest snow, as easily as a hot knife through butter. We even built a little shed for it, a veritable masterpiece of architecture constructed entirely of pallets that straddled both our properties. It was a beautiful machine. The only thing it lacked was a name. We just called him"The Snow Blower". That had a nice ring to it.

Several years into our ownership of The Snow Blower, a crisis developed. As popular as it was with us, that snow blower was even more popular with the local mouse population. Without even a discussion about rental fees, a family of the little rodents took up residence under the engine cover. They built a nest packed so tightly with grass clippings and assorted materials from several stuffed animals in the shed that the engine overheated and threw a rod during that first snowstorm. I finished moving the eighteen inches of snow from that storm with my trusty shovel.

The next day, we hauled the machine down to our local Toro dealer, where they put in a brand new engine for only $400. However, that new engine wasn't nearly as powerful as the old one. We were never again able to blast snow twenty feet across the driveway. More often than not, it just dribbled out the chute. So much for replacement parts And we had now put $1,600 total into our

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