In the days before cars did people bother with all this shoveling?
Shoveling snow that is.
Were we always nuts that whenever snow fell we immediately thought we better get out there and move it a couple feet over?
Or did they look at it like rain, which they weren’t going to do anything about either?
I guess the period I would reference is the late 1800’s before cars became popular.
I wonder if they didn’t bother or if they had it much, much worse because there were no big trucks to plow miles of streets.
I mostly don’t mind shoveling. I prefer a nice quite shovel to using a noisy machine most of the time.
The part where the plow comes along and fills the end of the driveway back in is the worst part of it.
However it does seem kind of stupid that I’m putting in so much work for the car, which should be a convenience instead of being a bit of a prima donna for needing a path cleared for it.
Which makes me question sidewalks even, which are for people, but they are walkways on the side of roads, where the cars roam. So in my twisted logic I could blame the cars for that too.
Sleighs. They used to shovel snow onto the covered bridges so sleighs could cross.
Also, people didn’t need to go very far. Most of the population were farmers, so you ate what you had stored and only needed to go to the barn to milk the cow.
Cities are cities. You have to get around in them. This has been true since cities developed in climates cold enough for snow.
Snow shoveling was always one of the major patronage jobs. The government or a political party or some other source of power hired hundreds of temporary workers to clear the streets and walkways. That brought them into favor … and reminded them that if they didn’t vote the right way they wouldn’t get the call next time. This was before secret ballots of course. Job creation is power, although that’s not the way it’s currently sanitized.
It’s one thing to shovel garden paths or city streets. However, i would think that once the snow was deep enough to make a horse flounder, rural roads were basically impassable until the snow melted down enough, was packed down, or someone adventurous broke trail with an energetic and well-fed horse pulling a sleigh. Or else they tended not to have more than a foot of snow at a time in most situations…
This makes me think the medieval villages pretty much were on their own, December through February?
I grew up in Philadelphia in the 40s. Homeowners were required by law to shovel the sidewalks in front of their house within 6 hours of the snow ending. The city itself did no snow clearance. Let it melt was their policy. And it did…until 1959 when there were three heavy snows in s three week period. In West Philly there were two major three lane one-way streets, one leading to and the other away from center city. They each allowed parking on both sides. First snowfall comes on the parked cars get iced as the traffic throws the snow up against them and it freezes. So cars double parked beside them and there are only two lanes of traffic. Along comes the second snowfall and the double-parked cars get iced in. Some idiots triple parked, reducing traffic in some cases to one lane. Then came the third snowfall. Little or no melting had taken place over the two weeks. At this point, these major through streets were down to one lane each.
The city reacted in two ways. First special “Snow emergency route” signs were erected on all major through streets and parking was banned on them once a snow emergency was declared. Second the city went out and bought snowplows and started clearing snow.
Maybe 15 years ago, I was in Seattle when a moderately heavy snowfall hit. Most Seattle drivers have no idea how to drive in slippery conditions and the freeways were littered with abandoned cars. Second, the entire city owned exactly four snowplows! It was a minor disaster.
One of my mother’s friends did research on her ancestors so she could join the Daughters of the American Revolution (you have to be a descendant of someone who was in the Revolution). She said she did a lot of research in newspapers for obituaries. One thing she commented on was how newspapers 200 years ago had a lot of obituaries that were several months old in the spring. People living in the sticks were snowed in during winter and could not make it to town until the snow melted.
She also sent in photographs of tombstones of her ancestors. The D.A.R. sent them back saying they needed to be enlarged as “we do not have a device to read them”. Those people were apparently too cheap to buy a magnifying glass.
I lived in a 1800’s farmhouse in Vermont for a while. It was about the creepiest place ever for many reasons but one of them was that it had a temporary morgue in the dirt basement (it was a very cold basement) for any family members that died during the winter. They couldn’t properly bury them until the ground thawed in the spring.
The “January” illustration in Duc de Berry’s Tres Riche Heures prayerbook shows a fellow driving a donkey from the settlement to town. The path appears to be simply trodden apcked snow, but it is only about a foot deep based on the depth of the sides. (Also shows a boy and girl warning their nether parts by the fire, while milady is doing so more modestly).
the movie “Grumpy Old Men” made me wonder, does it really get so cold by (US) Thanksgiving that people can go ice fishing, even in Minnesota?
Once the cold sets in in some areas, any snow that falls is there to spring. SOme more southerly warmer spots, they could rely on the stuff (usually) melting the next warm spell.