Dave –
I can sympathize. I grew up in a small town in central Maine, where snowfall totals weren’t too different from yours. Main Street was US Rte 2, so plowing was done by the state. During the storm, their big diesel trucks would come blasting through town at about 30 mph, pushing all the snow into huge banks like the ones in your photos. Our town did not own a truck-mounted snow blower, but it did have a self-propelled belt loader. You can picture it – a tracked vehicle with a big open maw in the front, and an auger to move snow onto the belt. The belt carried the snow up, and then to the back of the vehicle, where it dropped into a waiting dump truck. After each storm, the loader and a string of trucks would trundle down Main St at about 2 mph, scooping up the snow and everything in it, right down to the pavement. I don’t recall that the apparatus ever tried to carry off a parked car, but I do remember when it carried off the town drunk, who had passed out and presumably died during the storm. The state plows buried him, and the belt loader popped him into the waiting truck, which unceremoniously dumped him onto the ice-covered river along with about 20 tons of snow. Today, there would be nationwide news stories, a formal investigation, guilty parties sought out, laws proposed, and general screaming among the politicians. When it happened, though, it was pretty much decided that he had caused his own demise, and after all he was dead long before the loader came, and nothing could be done about it, so no one worried much. And small-town life went on.
Bill
