Be a better person / winter sidewalks

What ever happened to personal responsibility? Why have people lost their conscience? What I am talking about is people who feel no quilt in leaving a mess for someone else to deal with.
I do not claim to be better than the next person, in fact for most of my life I have felt inferior, and I guess that in part has helped me to try to do my best in what ever I do.
Some examples I will use are fresh in my mind, as these are what prompted me to write this in the first place. By writing about them, is to vent, and to vent allows my to clear them from the front of my mind and move on to positive thoughts.
Most evenings I walk my dog, I find it good for us both, I get a little exercise, and he gets to sniff all the new places along the way. It’s winter, just a couple weeks before Christmas, here in lower Michigan, we have received our first snow of the season and I am reminded that many people do not clear their sidewalks.
I am a grown man, and I wear proper attire when out in the cold night, I have boots, and expect to traverse a little snow in my path, it’s winter after all. However, I tend to get peeved regarding this subject annually, as I have a few neighbors who seem to care less about maintaining their walkways. It bothers me because for the past seven years my daughter and her classmates have to walk in the streets in the predawn hours daily to walk to the bus stop. It bothers me that my eighty year old neighbor has to walk in the street to the post office, and to church.
Now to describe those who feel it’s ok to leave their walks snow-covered. On the one side of me is the “second home owner”.
This person spends all but just a few weekends at her home in Chicago.
She is a fair weather type, and I don’t believe she comes at all in the winter. In the summer months we know when to expect her, as someone comes, cleans her house, and mows her lawn in anticipation of her arrival. I am sorry if it sounds as if I have a chip on shoulder, or envy of her money, that’s not it at all, nor is it my point.
This woman did a small video documentary about how our little backwoods town doesn’t have the New York Times paper for sale anywhere, to which I kind of felt offended. We are not un-worldly, dumb, or illiterate. We read the news, we get the Chicago papers, we get the national papers, and we even have local papers to keep us informed of world events. I feel sorry for someone who could scoff at us not having her favorite paper, but is out of touch with her own neighborhood. It bothers me that she gets celebrated for her talents, yet doesn’t care about her fellow man. The past three years I have shoveled her sidewalk….not that she ever knew, I didn’t do it for her, I did it for my community.
Careless neighbor number two is the “renter”. I have owned this house for nearly ten years, I have seen more than a dozen renters live in the duplex next door, and in that time only one has brought their own shovel, and cleared the walk in front of their house. These people are all types, but all temporary. They move in, they have no mower, no shovel, and no desire. They will usually just walk through the snow, no matter how deep, some of the young people aren’t even smart enough to wear boots. If they don’t care about their own wet feet, they sure don’t care about anyone else’s. I had one such neighbor come and bum my shovel, and after a couple weeks he just started helping himself to it. It drove me nuts, but at least he would shovel his walk.
More often than not, I shovel the walk in front or their place too.
Careless neighbor number three is the “bank”. In these tough financial times many houses in town have been foreclosed upon. On the three block long street behind me more than half of the home are empty and for sale, I feel terrible for those who lost their homes due to financial strain, Lord knows I am barely keeping my own.
However, I do not feel sorry for the financial institutions who are in possession of them now, it is their responsibility to keep up with the lawn, utility bills, and snow removal. By the way, it is a village ordinance, so you have been told, but laws are only effective if enforced.
My little rant today happens to be about snow, but does it really matter what the subject is? My point is that people don’t seem to have courtesy toward each other, something that was once common. Nobody should have to be told or asked. I know this makes me sound old, but it is really that hard to make the effort to help your fellow man make this world a better place?
Grow up, be a better person. Shovel your snow, mow your lawn, pick up after your dog, don’t park in a handicap spot, return your shopping cart, and rewind your tapes before returning them!
Why is that so hard?