Comedian George Carlin occasionally asked American audiences, “Is it safe to drink the water here?”
Inevitably, Americans would reply negatively, gleefully confessing they live with and tolerate substandard, suspect water. Carlin would point out how many cities he’d been to in the past year or so, and how Americans nearly always seem to doubt water safety.
There are a plenty of other things Americans seem to feel entitled to criticize, such as traffic, sports officiating, gas prices, incumbent elected officials and the amount of time and money needed for construction.
Lately, I’ve noticed there’s another element of American society that seems to be fair game: How and when to plow snow off of roads.
From the moment I saw the first major snowstorms of my life — the February 1978 storms that dropped more than three feet of snow along the East Coast — it seems there’s always someone criticizing government for not plowing the “right way,” or fast or effectively enough.
Everywhere I’ve lived — from the East Coast to Southern California to the high desert southwest and the Midwest — hardly anyone seems to think local leaders get it right. There seems to be complaining after each storm, and how if the plowing would have been done quicker, or later, or on these streets first instead of those, or using these methods and chemicals, wrecks or cancellations might have been avoided.
I certainly won’t be the first person to thank snow plow drivers and other folks who courageously clear our roads. Many of us have felt the gratitude that comes not from making it to a fun event or a big game, but simply making it home safely from a grocery store.
Some of the negativity sounds like grade-school-age children complaining about having to go bed at a certain time. If all these complaints were the only criteria snow removal personnel used to decide whether to continue in this career field, each of them would probably quit their jobs early on.
While it might be dangerous to assume government always has the public’s best interest in mind, snow removal folks are in a different situation than someone who’s balancing a ledger or voting as part of a committee. They are sometimes the only ones who know what their challenges look like, especially on a dark, low-traffic road covered with fresh snow.
Dispatchers, supervisors and anyone else coordinating these efforts is working somewhat blindly, relying on someone else’s eyes and words, in many cases, to decide where to put salt, chemicals, plows, or “road closed” signs.
I don’t know a whole lot about snow removal, but I know enough to know it’s a tough, thankless job. If it were an easy job, everyone would do it, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a teenager even say they want to work for a highway or roads department, much less drive a heavy truck across roads deemed unsafe for travel without plowing.
I had an accident in March in a city that seems to have a particularly bad reputation for continually annexing neighborhoods it cannot seem to keep clear in the winter months. Yes, I was angry that it happened, but I didn’t have a beef with any particular municipality, government or policy.
Not only did I make the choice to leave my house that day, but so did the driver who hit me. And the snow removal people made choices that day as well — some of which involved their own safety and the lives of those around snow plows.
I salute the women and men who put their own safety aside to clear the roads. I might not always agree with how and which decisions are made, but I won’t be second-guessing a business I still know so little about.