Bad Weather Makes Good Neighbors, Part Two: The Blizzard of 2026
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
Like everyone else, I woke up Monday morning with more than a foot and a half of snow on the ground. I could not see my car in the parking spot in front of my townhouse. The eight steps leading to my front door were now a ski slope for squirrels.
Out came the boots, sweatpants, hoodie, jacket, and gloves. I grabbed the shovel and went outside.
My first step onto the ground and my leg disappeared up to my knee.
It was going to be a long day, but at that moment I didn’t know exactly how long it would be.
I made my way to the back of my car. They had already plowed my street, so there was an extra buildup of very heavy slush I needed to remove.
After a few minutes, I struck up a conversation with several of the neighbors who were already out there shoveling. Of course we talked about the weather. “Most snow I’ve seen in a while,” one of them said, and we all agreed.
Then I asked, “Well, how do you eat an elephant?”
We nodded and laughed, knowing the answer, then went back to shoveling out our cars and trucks.
A few minutes later, I noticed a woman two doors down from me shoveling her steps. My car could wait, so I walked down and started to clear the snow and slush for her.
While we worked, she left her front door wide open. A little white terrier watched us from the doorway. The dog didn’t bark or move, but with his head tilted to the side, I felt he was judging me.
After a while, her car was out of the spot and cleared of snow, ready to go.
During the last snowfall, I started to clean the car of a woman I didn’t know, even though she had lived next to me for nine years.
I went behind her car next to clean when, like Groundhog Day, she stepped out of her front door.
Six more weeks of winter.
We exchanged greetings and then talked about the things two people who don’t really know each other talk about.
Then she asked me, “Do you like peanut butter?”
Okay, random, but I told her I did. In fact, peanut butter on crackers is my favorite snack.
We cleared her parking spot, but not her car. It had a foot and a half of snow on the hood and roof. Clearing the snow off the car would simply refill the parking spot.
So I carved a small hole on the driver’s side windshield and directed her to a clear spot on the road. We cleaned off the rest of her car, and she thanked me and went back into her house for a work call.
But I wasn’t quite done just yet.
At the end of the parking area is where the plows pile all their snow. It was piled so high that a six-foot dumpster was hidden from view.
Earlier that day, I saw a woman in the last townhouse clearing her steps, but she was not there now. I knew it would take her forever to free her car from that wall of snow.
I went over and started to shovel her out.
There was no place to put the shoveled snow, so for each scoop, I had to walk it across the street and toss it.
After a while, the woman cracked open the front door and yelled, “Thank you.”
Back and forth we went until she asked, “What do you drink, alcohol-wise?”
I declined, but she insisted (in what world am I turning down alcohol?).
Finally, I told her scotch, and she asked what brand.
I told her Dewar’s (decent for a low-end scotch).
Then she pivoted and asked, “Do you like cocoa?”
And that’s how I ended up sitting at a neighbor’s dining room table sipping cocoa with marshmallows and whipped cream.
It was nice to have a conversation with a neighbor I lived next to, someone I didn’t even know an hour ago.
It was the first time in twenty-six years I was sitting in a townhouse in my development that wasn’t mine.
After cocoa, we got her car out of the snow, and I went home.
It was an interesting day.
But it wasn’t over yet.
A few hours after I was done shoveling, my doorbell rang. I opened the door, and that’s when I found out why my neighbor had asked me, “Do you like peanut butter?”
With a big smile and a “thank you,” she handed me four neatly wrapped chocolate brownies with peanut butter on top.
They didn’t last long and were absolutely delicious.
And still, it wasn’t over.
The day after all this happened, late in the afternoon, my doorbell rang again. It was my neighbor Pam (the woman who gave me cocoa).
I opened the door, and she handed me a brown paper bag with a bottle in it.
“You really didn’t have to do this,” I reiterated.
She replied, “No, you didn’t have to do what you did yesterday.”
I looked in the bag. It wasn’t a bottle of Dewar’s.
It was a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label 12-year-old Scotch.
That is not just a good scotch, it is a great scotch.
I thanked her again, and before she left, she turned to me and asked:
“Do you play Bingo?”
So let me ask that question again.
How do you eat an elephant?
...one bite at a time.
Another question worth asking is, how do you build a neighborhood?
One shovel.
One cup of cocoa.
One bottle of scotch.
Bingo.
