I shovel snow for money. It has snowed a lot this year.
I stand outside, shovel in hand, making my way around and around a large office building. I salt when it is icy, I scrape the walkways to make the going safe and I shovel the larger amounts of snow that pile on the stairs.
I walk to work, sometimes at 2 or 3 a.m. The wind blasts in my face, and my fingers get numb. I wonder, for the first time of the day but not the last, why I am doing this.
I like nights the best. I work in the heart of Portland, and there are drunks leaving bars, screaming and having snowball fights; the usual sketchy characters roaming around; and chicks in heels falling down. But then it is just me, in the snow and the cold with a shovel. Once I get through that time when I am cold, when I want to quit, when my back feels like it is breaking, I just get my second wind and work into the dawn and throughout the day.
I circle around the building all day, keeping the walkway cleared for the business people, the shoppers who have to move around and spend money and the few miserable tourists stupid enough to visit now.
The building where I work is large. There are shops on the bottom floor, a restaurant, a bar, a high-end hair salon. Then there are offices above, where lawyers and accountants ply their trades.
I am 49. I am a writer but not a wealthy one. When I was younger, I would have felt shame doing what I do. I would feel that those walking past me would think I was a loser. Just the fact that they thought that would mean I wouldn’t have done it. With age comes a dignity about such things, though. I do what I do because I need to, and there is pride that comes with that.
Now I spend my days with my odd little cadre of shovelers, replete with the understanding that none of us could do what all the people inside do and that they couldn’t do what we do, either.
The worst time is between 7 and 9 a.m., when they all come to work. They walk past with their eyes down, struggling against the elements. The world that I live in for 10 to 12 hours is one most of them can’t deal with for more than a minute.
But if I were to admit it, I could never last in their world. I tried quite a few times. I worked in social services, I ran programs, I worked for large insurance companies. None of these jobs lasted. I couldn’t survive inside, where it was warm. It scared me in there.
We get paid more than people think. I make what a bartender might make in a shift, but of course I am cold and tired.
I never know when I am going to work. I might not work for two weeks straight, then I might be working for 20 hours.
The guys I work with come and go. There are a few hardcores. A couple are 60 or so. They are in AA and have been shoveling for years. Both of them are artists, and they both like to talk a lot. They do the building across the street, but they work for my boss, too. They yell, and they run around. One of them even wears shorts sometimes. But they also are slow. Sometimes, when I am done with my building, I have to go across the street and help them finish, too.
The crew on my building varies. I am the only guy there every time. One colleague was a 23-year-old woman who had been clean of heroin for a week. She showed up twice. The last time she sat down on the stairs and cried while she called on the phone for a ride.
Then there is a younger guy with a beard who is stoned all the time. The last time he worked his lip was swollen like a sausage because he got punched on the street after leaving a bar the night before.
Last time I worked with a homeless guy my boss picked up at the shelter. He had sneakers on. He said he couldn’t feel his feet. He kept walking around carrying two shovels and bellowing. My boss paid him at the end of the day and gave him twice as much as he was owed. The next storm, my boss brought in boots for him, but he never came back.
Most of the people who walk past while I work treat me like I am invisible, which is my favorite way to be treated. Some say thank you, which is nice, but it isn’t necessary. I am doing this because I am being paid, not because I am trying to help.
Others joke. They act like we are all in the same boat: “Man I am sick of this,” they say, or “Great weather, huh?” In the past, I would have been irritated by these people. But now I understand that they really are just trying to reach out to someone else on their planet, and that’s cool. It really is. But I still don’t need it. I want to be not seen and not heard. I want to just be a guy, shoveling snow.
I was up at 3 a.m. for a recent storm and worked the whole day through. When it snows again, I will be there.
Brian Whitney is an author who lives in Portland. He shovels snow to pay the bills.