the good samaritan lives here

When people ask me what living in Iowa was like, this is one of the stories I will tell.

One night, in very early February, a blustery, freezing cold blizzard tore through Iowa City, grabbing up great handfuls of falling snow and flinging them into feet-high drifts, pushing through door screens and clogging tree branches. It was the most snow we’d ever had. The next morning, Boyfriend put a coat over his fleece and a hat over his earmuffs and went out to clear the long driveway. It was supposed to drop into the negative teens that night, and he worried about the snow freezing solid. He worked and worked, drilling down through the waist-high snow drift and tunneling ten feet towards the street. But after all this, not even half the driveway was clear. So he went back inside for a break.

While we were frying some bacon, we heard a great roar outside our kitchen window and rushed to investigate. Our next door neighbor, whom we have never met, had trundled his snow blower to our garage was steadily pacing up and down our driveway, clearing a path. Unasked and unannounced. We were amazed and so, so relieved! And delighted! Once he finished our side, he cleared the duplex neighbors’ half of the driveway . . . and then continued, house to house, clearing the entire cul-de-sac’s driveways, and some of the street to boot. Conclusion: I usually try to avoid blanketing entire geographical regions with a single personality trait. But in this case I’m allowing an exception. It’s true, I do not know where else this would have happened, and I say, Oh, Iowa!