I can remember vividly as a child. It did not matter how frigid the evening, if there was a winter storm my dad would be bundled up from head to toe cleaning the lengthy driveway with his Toro snowblower.
It would take him more than an hour to clear our large rural driveway and he would come into the house looking like Han Solo just returning from finding Luke Skywalker on the ice planet Hoth.
At the time, I simply assumed my dad, like most other fathers I knew, just loved their toys, be they snowblowers, lawn tractors or weed whackers.
As a result, our driveway, despite being on the bald Saskatchewan prairie was always as clean as newly paved parking lot.
Over the past two weeks, however, I started to look at my father’s adventures into the dark winter nights in a different light.
During the wet blizzard two weeks ago I begrudgingly shoveled my driveway only to watch it get draped in snow faster than I could clean it.
A friend griped he had cleaned his driveway three times during the day, only to be covered in a blanket of snow again and again.
Why did he bother? Why did any of us bother?
Then last weekend, when spring finally decided to show up, I put the snow shovels away and hauled out the broom and started to sweep my garage and driveway.
I was in the garage scrubbing a winter’s worth of grease and grime off the garage floor.
Again, I had to ask myself, why? Why on Earth on the first warm spring Saturday am I in a dark dingy garage on my hands and knees scraping caked mud off the floor?
I was not the only one. I glanced across the street and saw a neighbour out with a hose, bucket and brush scrubbing his driveway like he was washing the space shuttle’s windshield.
I walked out of the garage and into the sunshine. I dropped my broom and tossed my sponge to the side.
Looking up at the bright blue sky I reflected on what was going on.
I remember my father keeping our garage floor so clean it was like we were about to host the Royal Wedding reception. William and Kate would be eating canapés and cottage pie off my dad’s best concrete.
I looked around my quiet cul de sac and saw my manly neighbours out on their driveways with blow dryers, toothbrushes and magic erasers. It was a silly display of spring cleaning.
Then I realized what had occurred.
It was not that my dad or the neighbourhood fathers were in love with their toys, they are in love with their driveways.
I know it is hard to accept, but it’s true. Is there any other reason we would buff our driveway until royalty could eat off it, but consider a dirty cup usable after we wiped it with our shirtsleeve. If so much as a pine cone rolls onto the driveway we consider our parking pad filthy yet we have no problem enacting “the 30-second rule.”
We have become slaves to our driveways and it’s ridiculous. It is time to stand and say no more! My driveway is clean enough!
But please stay off mine as I just cleaned it with the Rug Doctor and I am now waiting for the Turtle Wax to dry.
