Plow drivers deserve thanks

The hours are long. The hours are lonely. And the hours can be dangerous.
The hours are also — unfortunately — too often unappreciated.
Everyone likes to second-guess the folks who drive the snowplows.
Oh, they started plowing too late. Or too early. Or they’re concentrating on the wrong roads.
All of us have been — at one time or another during winter — driving behind a snowplow. And most of us have been grumbling.
The plow is going too slowly. Or that salt it’s spreading is going to damage our car.
As if that weren’t enough, there’s the universal complaint that just after we get our driveway dug out, a snowplow — city, county, or state, it doesn’t matter — passes and blocks our way.
There’s just something about the process that lends itself to second-guessing and griping about how the job is getting done.
And yet, when you look at the size and scope of the job, those gripes seem a little foolish.
Jay County, for example, has something like 700 miles of rural roads. Then there are the state highways and the streets in cities and towns and villages.
So when bad weather rolls in, as it has during the past few days, the chore is nothing short of enormous.
And we — the very folks who like to gripe about snowplows — don’t make it any easier.
In town, we park on the street so the job can’t get done properly, then complain that we’ve been plowed in.
In the country, we venture out when we shouldn’t, get stuck and create an unnecessary obstacle for plow drivers who are already dealing with a tough job.
So just for a moment — in between our grumbling and our tendency to get in the way — let’s pause and do the right thing for a change.
Let’s say thanks. Thanks to the city crews, the town crews, the county crews, the state crews that drive all those miles, clearing the way so we can get to work or the supermarket or grandma’s house a little safer.
We may grumble and we certainly get in the way, but we’d be going nowhere in weather like this without you. — J.R.[[In-content Ad]]