The Rake Method

Do you know what works pretty well at removing impacted snow from under a car that is stuck in your driveway? Try one of those metal rakes (the kind that rises up and smashes you in the face when you carelessly step on it). It does a really good job at loosening and grabbing the compressed snow. Is this rake method something I learned this past winter during the nasty February snowstorm we had? No. Did I read about it on SiberiaToday.com? No. Am I recalling the ramblings of old Jebediah Donner telling me in my childhood of his hardscrabble life on the Great Plains in the winter of 1910? No.

I learned the rake method on Easter Sunday in Lakewood, Ohio. I learned about it after struggling in vain for 40 minutes to free my poor car using my snowshovel and my dirt shovel and my desperate, freezing fingers. I learned the rake method as a result of having gone through this stupid, freak, Lake Erie-fueled, four day snow machine. The same snow machine that caused the Cleveland Indians to flee the city for the more temperate climes of Milwaukee in order to play their next three home games, their first three having been snowed out. Why do I bring this up now? I don't know. But I swear by Al Gore's jowls that the only global warming I believe in is the kind that happens when you make a bonfire out of his collected speeches.