He Pilots a Giant Blue Mercury, or a Cool Orange Snowthrower
![He Pilots a Giant Blue Mercury, or a Cool Orange Snowthrower 1 photo1 e1295709917676](https://maxhartshorne.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/photo1-e1295709917676.jpg)
One of the joys of staying put for many years is how you get to know people, and recognize their cars and their mannerisms as you circulate through town. In our village, there is a short man who likes to wear funny looking hats and drives an enormous light blue Mercury Marquis. It’s a 1970s era car with an impossibly long nose and he always looks slightly jaunty as he cruises that bad boy up and down Sugarloaf St.
This man is also the pilot of our town’s coolest vehicle–a sidewalk-sized snowblower that’s used after every storm to clear the sidewalks. I saw Greenfield’s version of this, theirs has half-tracks but instead of the tw0-deck snowblower blades, it has a v-shaped blade. I much prefer our sporty orange model that shoots the show ten feet out and does such a good job clearing the sidewalks.
The other day I was driving after a big snow and saw the blue-car man behind the wheel. I pulled over and called to him, and he turned the rig off to hear me. “Could you take that thing and do the sides of Mountain Road? We are barely able to pass another car and it would be great to have another two feet of open road for cars to pass.”
He thought about it and then decided I was right. Now my neighbors and I on our 12-foot wide street (with no sidewalks) can pass each other with ease. He sliced the snow on one side, leaving a clean cleave of two feet high, up and down the road. Thanks, Blue Car Man. Nice to make your acquaintance!