Winter-weary Midwesterners shovel their way to wings

I grew up in a working-class Illinois Methodist home, and though I wouldn’t say my family was particularly religious, Dad was the poster-child for the protestant work ethic.

He was a good man who worked long hours in a steel mill, and to his way of thinking, hard work was the path to goodness. If you wanted something you worked for it — an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work. Even if he could somehow save two nickels to rub together, he would never have considered investing them. Money earned without sweat belonged on a Monopoly board, not in your pocket. Nothing good ever came for nothing.

But that protestant work ethic went way beyond money. It extended even to the weather.

On any beautiful summer’s day, as the neighborhood ladies hung out the wash to dry, I can remember my mother chatting over the fence with Mrs. Zumstein, another protestant Midwestern housewife.

“Nice day, isn’t it?” Mrs. Z would say.

“Yep. We’ll pay for it when winter comes,” came Mom’s response.

Because that was the protestant way of things in my Midwestern neighborhood. Good things are paid for up front, with hard work. And if goodness comes for free, as a gift instead of as a result of sweat and toil, it will require payment later.

My friend Larry grew up two doors away in a Catholic home, and although his father also worked hard, he seemed to have a different view of things when it came to payment.

Larry went to confession every Sunday to pay for his sins of the previous week, and when he came home he would flaunt his cleanliness to me.

“If I die today, I’m going straight to Heaven,” he would taunt, no matter how much mischief he had reveled in throughout the previous week. It took a bucketful of Hail Marys to get him scrubbed clean — some weeks more than others — but he balanced the books every Sunday morning.

Catholic kids like Larry, it seemed to me, were on the pay-as-you-go system when it came to celestial grace. We Methodists were on some kind of revolving credit plan.

It did little good for me to argue with Larry that my soul was also clean enough to let me through the gates of Heaven. He knew me better than that. Heck, he was with me when I committed most of those sins. A lot of them were his idea.

It was never clear to me exactly what it would take for a Methodist kid like me to wipe those sins away, except that it wouldn’t be pleasant. And without a weekly payment to chip away at the debt, I was pretty sure that my bill, when it came due, would make a hundred Hail Marys look like a hiccup.
And it didn’t help to listen to Mom and Mrs. Zumstein agreeing with each other that even a sunny day in June came with a price tag.

I think that’s why Midwesterners always take their brutal winter weather with a resigned shrug and a stoical smile. Sure, it’s bad out, but it’s nothing more than a balance coming due. That snow on the driveway will take a lot of shoveling, but somehow it feels sort of cleansing to toil out there in the brisk winter air, doesn’t it? And then to go back inside and wrap your frosted fingers around a cup of cocoa, sweeter than a sacrament, and paid in full with blisters.

Just watch those Midwesterners on the nightly TV news as a reporter shoves a microphone in their face to ask how they manage to weather the storm. There’s always just a hint of a smile on their face, isn’t there? Their noses are red and dripping, their lips chapped and sore, but still there’s that little grin crinkling the corners of their mouth as they shrug and say that it’ll take work, but they’ll get through it.

And then they turn from the microphone to lean into the task once more, tossing the snow aside with a puff of vapor hovering over their head as pure and wispy-white as a halo, their glistening shoulders feathered with flakes.

Whenever I see that, my protestant work-ethic heart tells me that it is not a driveway or a sidewalk that those Midwesterners are cleaning. It is their souls.

My wife and I smile as we watch those frosty images on TV, because we have traded this winter’s snowy Midwest for balmy Naples, Fla., where blizzards are about as common as volcanoes.

Still, before we switch channels to watch something else, I can’t help but feel a twinge of guilt for missing out on the snow. After more than 60 Midwestern winters, I am not sure if I have finished paying for all of my youthful sins. All I am sure of is that I miss the purity of toiling to clear away the snow, with yet more penance on the way.

So buck up, my fellow protestant Midwesterners. This may be the worst winter in living memory, but it is Heaven-sent.

Some folks pave their path to paradise week-by-week with prayer beads.

You do it season-by-season with shovels.

• Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.

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