Attribution: Oto Zapletal, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper and Phyllis in enjoying the current winter excess from behind thick panes of glass while watching the scurrying and beeping and blinking of the army of snow removal machines.
Never intending to make trouble, but the question arises with the keeper as to whether or not the operators of those nimble snow contraptions don’t tend to be almost totally male for a number of reasons: the male fascination with machines, especially those that allow them to control speed and direction, the male satisfaction derived from seeing the huge piles of snow they have created, and finally the women who look out at the deep snow and frigid temperature and make a collective conclusion to “let the men do it” when it comes to snow removal.
The keeper is forever ready to be corrected, and shivers at the thought that he could be accused of sexism in concluding that those out there in the tractors and trucks and plows are largely male.
As much as the keeper enjoys the stay-inside winter storm survival plan with Phyllis, he recalls with fondness the years when he had a little John Deere tractor with a cab and a snow plow and he could hardly wait to get out there and play in the snow on his challenging driveway.
Photo by Bill Stokes