Update: Ah, screw it. I needed the exercise, anyway. My neighbor Jack and I just "ran the gauntlet" and snowblowed (snowblew?) the rest of the alley. It needed to get done, and it takes a village ...
Nine times out of 10, I wouldn't trade city living for the suburbs. Today may not be one of those days.
Giant blizzards are fun, and I found out the hard way a few years ago that sometimes you can't just drive through them.
This time around, though, I got up early and spent 90 minutes snowblowing. Too bad it doesn't really matter.
Like everyone else who lives in Milwaukee and parks his or her car in a garage attached to an alley, shoveling snow does little good when your neighbors don't. For some reason, city plows don't do alleys, so it has to be a team effort. (Yes, I know this is turning into an annual blog, but each winter it feels unpleasantly fresh.)
In other words, I'm going nowhere fast. A few of my neighbors and I banded together and shoveled not only our sidewalks and alleys, but helped out in both directions. But between me and the street, we have to deal with several renters and elderly folks who will likely just wait until the snow melts.
It's going to take someone with a huge truck or a death wish to barrel his way through the alley to clear all this snow, and this time, it isn't going to be me. I think I might be taking the bus to work tomorrow.
My neighbor, Jack, who always handles much more than his own patch of alley, said all the houses on the block used to take up a collection and pay for private snow removal, but over the years, not enough neighbors would participate. They balked at the $25 annual charge, apparently. For what it's worth, I would happily add $25 to my property taxes if it meant my alley was plowed. I'd probably pay more than that.
So, now I'm afraid the few neighbors who actually care will now have to band together and snowblow a path for everyone who doesn't care. That's probably 50 yards in either direction, and with this much slow, it's a daunting proposition.
But what are the options? To whom can we complain? As Jack said, this is the price we pay for living in this neighborhood, in the middle of the block.
Today is one of those days when the price seems a little too high.
Andy is the president, publisher and founder of OnMilwaukee. He returned to Milwaukee in 1996 after living on the East Coast for nine years, where he wrote for The Dallas Morning News Washington Bureau and worked in the White House Office of Communications. He was also Associate Editor of The GW Hatchet, his college newspaper at The George Washington University.
Before launching OnMilwaukee.com in 1998 at age 23, he worked in public relations for two Milwaukee firms, most of the time daydreaming about starting his own publication.
Hobbies include running when he finds the time, fixing the rust on his '75 MGB, mowing the lawn at his cottage in the Northwoods, and making an annual pilgrimage to Phoenix for Brewers Spring Training.
