This morning we got six inches, and Brad was out at six plowing again, and when he saw me at the window he tipped his cap. So I tipped my coffee cup back, because the county road supervisor had watched every one of those eleven videos, and he had told me he would be parked right across the street the next time it snowed.
Because last winter I did something about it. I set up the little camera my granddaughter gave me for Christmas. It caught him pushing snow across the road into my drive eleven separate times. And I found out it is against state law to push snow into a public road, and the county plow driver told me he had hit that ridge twice and nearly lost his blade.
For three winters the only thing I had lacked was proof and the law that named it, and the moment I had eleven dated videos and a state law against pushing snow into the road, the crank who calls the town on everybody became a documented case the road supervisor came to watch himself.
Brad had told my own nephew at the hardware store that I was a crank, and my nephew believed him and called to scold me, which hurt more than the shoveling. But a camera does not read the hardware-store gossip, and a state law is not a crank.
I did not argue. I tipped my cup. And the road supervisor, parked across the street, watched Brad push a wall of snow into my drive and into the public road, and stepped out right then.
The county did what my one request never could. Pushing snow into a public road is illegal, and Brad was ordered to stop, cited for it, and told the plow driver had nearly lost a blade on the ridge he left twice.
The snow stays on his own property now. And my nephew, once the supervisor set him straight, came over and shoveled my drive himself and apologized for believing Brad, which mended something I had been sad about all winter.
I am seventy-nine and I live alone and I get to my Tuesday and Thursday appointments now without scooping a four-foot ridge one shovelful at a time. Three winters of that ended not with a feud, but with eleven quiet videos and a road supervisor across the street, and it turned out the crank who calls the town on everybody was just an old woman who needed to get out of her own driveway.