At Random: How Government Works

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

A snowstorm may cover all, but it doesn’t hide the truth.
    I grew up on a ¼-mile dead end street with a cul-de-sac at the end that was approximately 40 yards in diameter. The street was bordered by 16 featureless brick houses built in 1958, all set to the front of ¼-acre featureless lawns. Our house, the 17th house on the street, was built in the 1850s – or maybe built in the 1700s and added to in the 1850s, depending on which rudimentary notes you choose to believe from that era. It sat off the street, on a partially wooded two-acre remnant of what was once a farm of several hundred acres.
    If our street were part of a golf course, it would be a dogleg left. To stand a chance at par – which would probably be a Par 4, but maybe a Par 5 due to elevation change – golfers would tee off, hit the ball approximately 220 yards up a mild incline, and try to lay up in the center of the dogleg, where our street makes a 90-degree turn to the left. From there they would be aiming up another mild incline at a hole they couldn’t see, which is dicey business. Golfers would be able to locate the hole only if they could see the flag, and then only if the pin were set dead center in a very large green: our 40-yard diameter cul-de-sac.

A double
bogey

    Now that I think about it, if you added a bunker or sand trap, it would definitely be a Par 5, and if you landed in either one, it would easily be a double bogey on your score card. It would be a tough hole, but it’s never been a tough street.
    The other 16 houses on our street, like the 200-house neighborhood on the back side of our property, were built when I was four years old: six decades later I still harbor resentment. Yes, the houses yielded childhood playmates and lifetime friends, but they also did away with the herd of deer and flocks of bob-white (quail) I loved to watch as a toddler. The deer finally made a comeback around the year 2000 – four decades after they were chased away; the missing bob-white are still only a simmering memory.
    There are tradeoffs in life – it’s called “progress” by most people – but I never fully bought in. If I ever succeed in making a deal with the devil in exchange for a magic red flashing button, some people will be wondering what unearthly event just happened to them, and the bob-white will be back. There is progress, and there are priorities: it is what it is.

When I
was a kid

What this brings me back to is snow, and how government works.
    When I was a kid, we never saw a snowplow. The county, and later the city – after we were annexed – plowed the main road, but they never made the turn up our little street. Adults cussed about it – loudly – but for us kids, it was nirvana. Give us a couple of snow days, and a big bonfire in the middle of the cul-de-sac, and we were happy for weeks.
    What made it even more perfect is that the neighbors directly across the dogleg from our driveway – the Jerouts, as I recall – had a hose in their heated garage. When it was cold enough, they would spray the arc of the dogleg and the ice would form a perfect surface for sliding a sled sideways. Back then we had wooden sleds with steel runners: we would start at the top of the hill, throw the sled into a skid so we could make the turn, and do a run out into a neighbor’s field before we slid into the highway. In the dark, sparks would fly from sled runners as they tore through ice into pavement. It was epic!
    When my mother died, near the end of 2002, I was living part-time on a nature preserve not far from where I grew up, part-time in Washington, DC, and was doing a lot of travel. In 2002, I spent weeks in Africa and weeks in Hawaii; it was a very good year. Until my mother died.

A lot
had
changed

On a whim, I bought out my siblings and kept the old house, thinking I would eventually tear it down and turn the entire property into a nature preserve. In 2003, I started splitting time between DC and Raleigh, NC; I did not spend much time at the old house. Even though it was in a metro area of more than 250,000 people, it became my occasional getaway: Rus-in-Urbe, country in the city.
    The street had changed drastically in my absence – half the families were people of color, for example – but I had fewer rednecks to deal with and overall better neighbors than the blue-collar white families I grew up amongst. Thank goodness for immigration and desegregation.
    One thing had not changed: when it snowed, we were on our own. If we wanted to go out and be able to drive back up the hill, we not only had to shovel our driveways, we also had to shovel much of the street.
    Then one day it happened. Two days after a major snow, I drove the three hours from Raleigh to check on the house, and the street had been plowed! What the hell?
    All around were 12 inches of snow, and there was about a three-foot high wall of plowed snow and ice blocking my driveway. But the street was clear. Immaculately clear. Like a movie set. What on earth? I parked in the street, pulled my shovel out of the trunk, and started digging. A few minutes later I heard the distinctive voice of my neighbor Alfred: “Paul-e! Paul-e.” He never calls me Paul, it’s always Paul-e; no, I don’t know why. Maybe I should ask? No, doesn’t matter.

Alfred is
gregarious

    Alfred is a gregarious, rotund black man who is the friendliest and most conversational neighbor I’ve ever had, not only on the street where I grew up, but anywhere.
    “Can you believe they plowed?” he asked, yelling across the street.
    “No,” I answered, “what’s up?”
    Alfred always knows everything about everybody on the street. He looked around cautiously, nodded, and started walking my way. He obviously had inside information, and even though he knew everyone knew he knew everything about everybody, he always shared his secrets in hushed tones.
    After the obligatory fist bump and elaborate ritual handshake – which, after 15 years, I’m still trying to perfect – he said “I found out what’s up with the plow, man. I found out.”
    I thought, yes, the neighborhood joke: “Telegraph, telephone, tell Alfred.” All I said was, “Of course you did. You know I count on you.”
    “This is good, man, really good,” he said, clearly excited. “As long as this keeps going, we won’t have to shovel no street no more.”
    After all these years, had the city council finally realized we had a street that needed plowing, just like every other street in the city? What miracle had transpired?
    “No, man, nothing like that. Better than that. We got a lock.”
    “What?” I said, “What’s the secret?”
    “Police chief’s girlfriend moved in,” he said, quietly, looking around carefully, “the house right at the end of the street. That’s why they plowed. The man got to be able to get in to see his woman.”
    Wait a minute. I had met the chief, and his wife. Hold on.
    “Not his wife,” Alfred said, “his girlfriend. They may not plow for the wife, but they sure gonna plow for the girlfriend. Got to be able to get in and get out,” he said, laughing at his own obvious joke, “can’t get stuck…in the snow, you know. Know what I mean?”
    And thus we had several blissful years of immaculate plowing. It was actually quite nice, since snow gets heavier every year. All I had to do was shovel to the street, not shovel the street itself. Wonderful.

Last week it snowed. Eight inches of the soft, fluffy snow like they get where my family is originally from: Upstate New York. Shoveling out to the edge of the street was easy work. I started to shovel my part of the street as well, but why bother when they would be plowing at any moment?

This called for
a shot of scotch

    I went inside, content with my effort, and had a shot of Laphroaig scotch. When I went to bed, I had a foreboding: did I ever hear a snowplow? Don’t think so, maybe I was in the shower. No worries.
    Overnight the temperatures rose from mid-20s to mid-30s, one of many oddities we often experience in the Southeast. The next morning, our wonderful fluffy eight inches of snow had compressed into something akin to shoveling four-inch cinderblocks. Thank goodness I did all my shoveling yesterday.
    I looked out at the street; it had NOT been plowed. Wtf? My fully cleared, hand-shoveled driveway ended abruptly against a six-inch wall of ice and snow. I was not encouraged when I discovered I could walk around on TOP of this mixture without even leaving a track. No worries, I thought – somewhat doubtfully – surely they will plow shortly.
    That afternoon, as I was gamely hacking away at what was now mostly ice, mixed with very little snow, I heard the unmistakable call: “Paul-e! Paul-e!”
    Looking up, there was the rotund one, dressed all in black, as always. For the record, black is not always slimming, not even black on black on black.
    “Hey Alfred,” I yelled across the street, “where’s our plow?”
    He looked around, furtive as always, nodded, and headed my way. Worrying he would hit the ice, slide down the hill, and end up with broken bones, I rushed to meet him.
    Fist bump, flub the ritual handshake – as always – wait for him to look around. “It’s bad,” he said. “Real bad.”
    “What happened?” I asked. “She gone, man. She gone. Done moved away.”
    “What? Who’s gone?”
    “The girlfriend,” Alfred said. “She left. Her son’s living there now. They ain’t plowing for him. You know, man, why would they plow for the son?”
    Alfred shook his head. “No girlfriend, no plow, we back to shoveling.”
    And that is how government works.

Copyright © 2022 by Paul Clark