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Jerry Zezima: Don't take snow for an answer

Jerry Zezima, Tribune News Service on

Published in Lifestyles

Because I am a geezer with a heart condition, I’m not ashamed to admit that when it comes to shoveling snow, I am also a wuss, which stands for “wait until spring starts.”

To compound matters, I was born during a blizzard and have been perpetrating snow jobs ever since.

So in anticipation of a recent storm, my wife, Sue, a cardiac patient herself, hired someone to shovel our driveway.

The forecast had called for “wind-driven snow,” as opposed to “car-driven snow,” which is caused by idiots who don’t clear their vehicles after a storm and then drive in front of you so all their snow blows onto your windshield and forces you to plunge into a snowbank.

Snowbanks are open until 4 p.m., after which you have to go to a snow ATM.

Sorry, I have brain freeze, which afflicts me even in the summer.

At any rate, the prediction of snow caused us to panic because our previous snowplow guy moved to Texas, the Lone Flake State, where one snowflake falls and paralyzes traffic for three days.

Not only that, but since the “real-feel” temperature outside our house rivaled the climate of Neptune (the planet, not the town in New Jersey), the snow wasn’t expected to melt until approximately the Fourth of July.

I could just imagine myself keeling over in the driveway, shovel in hand, and being found frozen to death the next morning like Jack Nicholson’s character in “The Shining,” except my movie would be called “The Snowing.”

That’s why Sue, bless her heart, which has stents, arranged for Benedetto Costanzo, the owner of Three Village Power Washing of Setauket, New York, to plow our driveway and shovel our walks.

As longtime customers (Sue called the day before), we knew we would get excellent service.

It was a dark and stormy night, but after the snow stopped falling and had piled up to a depth of about half a foot, Benedetto and his assistant, Matthew DiGennaro, came over in a truck with a plow on the front.

Matthew hopped out and started shoveling around the two cars parked vertically on one side of the driveway.

Benedetto drove up to one of the two garage doors, lowered the plow and put the truck in reverse, the first step in removing the crusty accumulation from the rest of the driveway.

 

As Benedetto kept on trucking, Matthew shoveled the front walk and a path leading around to the side of the house.

Then they dropped rock salt and sand so I wouldn’t slip on a patch of ice, become airborne, go head over heels and land on my keister, a pathetic performance that would have disqualified me from the Winter Olympics.

“You saved my life,” I told the guys when they were finished.

“We’re happy to help,” said Benedetto, who’s 55 but looks younger.

“I like shoveling snow, but I’m not supposed to,” said Sue.

“I hate shoveling snow, but I’m not supposed to, either,” I chimed in.

“That’s why I do it,” said Matthew, who’s 24 but doesn’t look a day over 23.

When I asked Matthew if he spells his name with one T or two, he said, “Two, like the apostle.”

“You made the snow miraculously disappear,” I said.

“I salt the earth,” Matthew told me.

“I’ll take that as gospel,” I said.

After a blizzard of more silly remarks, such as telling Benedetto that his age matches the speed limit, which nobody obeys even during a snowstorm, he said, “You could work for me. I’ll take you out on estimates. You can entertain the customers.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “Then you can say you hired a real flake.”


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