The Other Good Samaritan

I was too spent when I turned to the novel last night, so I only got a few paragraphs in. I stayed up until after midnight, trying. Aside from those paragraphs, it was a huge amount of time spent on accomplishing little: drinking my last beer, a Sam Adams I was given at work, reading the last two pages of The Moviegoer, and the first few of a Barry Hannah novel.

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It was frustrating. I spent all day thinking about my impass last night and, once again, wrote down notes while in the truck. I was lucky enough to be in the truck for more than a full day -- nine hours -- thanks to the weather slowing my runs down. So I'm not going to blog much tonight. I hope I can focus my writing energy there.

However, I wanted to mention an incident that happened a few weeks ago.

Jess and I returned home after a storm to find that our driveway had been plowed. Because of the close marks, it appeared that someone had actually shovelled our driveway, but it was done cleanly -- you might say immaculately, since the lines went right up to the edge of the house -- so some sort of machine must have been involved.

Today, I pulled up past my driveway. The street plows had created a furrow blocking me out and it had hardened into a thick, heavy slush.

While driving to my house, I noticed my neighbor from two houses down walking his snowplow. I realized he was following my car and planned on plowing out the end of my driveway.

He had the plow's engine gunning the whole time, so I couldn't really speak with him. I shouted: "Were you the guy who plowed our driveway last time? Someone did it."

He looked at me, unblinking. "Wasn't me. Must have been some other Good Samaritan." And he set about his work.