The Glaciers of Chicago

We lived on a corner lot, so we had more sidewalk to shovel than most people.  I don't remember when I took over the shoveling from my dad, but I didn't mind it.  The long part on Whipple Street wasn't so bad if you kept after it but, if you left it for very long, it would get all packed down from people walking on it, which made it much harder to remove.  The short part on 51st Street was different because there was no grass strip between the street and the sidewalk and the building and and yard fence came right up to the other side of the sidewalk.  The only place to shovel to was the street itself and, as soon as you were done, the snowplow would come along and throw it right back on the sidewalk, along with the snow that had originally been on the street.  By this time it wasn't really snow anymore, it was this brown slushy shit.  I think that was caused by the salt, with maybe a little help from auto exhaust and general air pollution.  There was nothing to do but shovel it back into the street and hope it would melt before the plow came back the next day, which it usually did.  

There were a couple of winters when the snow didn't melt till spring, it just kept piling up.  They never plowed the side streets, which usually wasn't a problem because there was enough traffic on them to keep the snow packed down until it melted. During those couple of long winters, though, ruts developed on the side streets that you could drive in but couldn't get out of until you got to an intersection.  When two cars met going in opposite directions, one of them had to back up to the corner.

Those were the years that huge piles of snow were formed in various places by piling it up with front end loaders.  A big pile like that takes longer to melt than the regular snow because successive thawing and freezing hardens it up.  It's a common thing in Northern Michigan, but it was a novelty in Chicago in those days.  People were calling them "The Glaciers of Chicago".  Kids were warned that it was dangerous to climb on those glaciers, so of course we all did it.  Toward spring somebody proposed that the people on welfare be put to work breaking the glaciers up with picks and shovels so they could be loaded into dump trucks and hauled away, but nothing ever came of it, and they eventually melted on their own.