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Guest post by: Michael Hume Become an Author

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...And An Early Lesson In Personal Responsibility As I write this, it's a sultry, steamy August evening and I'm thankful for the blessing of a nice air-conditioned home office. For some reason, my mind has drifted to a holiday memory, one featuring very different weather, and a different collection of blessings for which I'll always be grateful.

It was my first Christmas out of the Army. I had just turned 22, and my new wife was all of eighteen-and-a-half (and pregnant with our daughter Connie - the first blessing in the story). We were living in a two-room apartment attached to a vacant building in a small town on the eastern Colorado plains, where I supported us on less than $700 a month from my job as editor of the town's weekly paper. We had planned to spend Christmas in Denver with family, but a devastating blizzard moved in as I was closing the shop at noon on Christmas Eve. The interstate was closed under more than three feet of snow, with drifts mounting much higher.

I was lucky to make the one-block walk back to the apartment.

When we awoke Christmas morning, it was a shock to both of us. My wife's presents had been secreted under the tree in Denver, so it was the first time she literally got nothing from Santa (or anyone else) on Christmas morning. We didn't care. It was a fun adventure, at that age. I remember we cooked up some eggs and, so fortified, ventured a peek outside.

The snow had drifted all the way over the top of the front door. I didn't own a snow shovel. I put on my coat, and basically cleared a path by walking into the drift, kicking and throwing as much snow out of the way as I could.

I had just fought my way through the worst of the drift when I heard a scraping sound on the other side. As soon as I could get the snow down below eye level, I saw an older gentleman slowly shoveling his way toward me from the street. It was my next-door neighbor, a man I'd met but didn't know well. Nowhere was the snow more shallow than three feet, and I could see he had worked hard to get this close to our door.

"Came to check on you kids," he said, between deep breaths. "Heck of a storm."

"It sure was," I said. "I've lived in Colorado most of my life, but I think this is the deepest snow I've seen."

(Truth to tell, I'd seen a few other storms this deep, but it was the first big blizzard I faced as an adult... as the guy who had to help make the family decisions, rather than the smart-mouthed teenager who'd had the luxury of criticizing them.)

"You're invited over to our place for Christmas Dinner," the man said.

I was taken aback. We had enough food to last several days, and none of us knew each other well... I also worried about appearing weak and needy to someone who was, after all, a "reader,"

"That's very nice," I said, "but I think we're gonna be fine. We've got plenty."

"Listen," he said, "I can't go back home without you. Wife and I talked it over, and you're definitely coming over. We want to meet your wife."

Who could say no?

I remember it was a little awkward, but we both tried to be on our best grown-up behavior, and though my wife found it very difficult to socialize under those circumstances, she did a great job and we all shared some Christmas cheer.

The two of us waded home through the snow, and it was about the middle of the afternoon - deep shadows were beginning to herald the arrival of what would certainly be a long, cold night under the deep blanket of snow.

We had just stomped the snow off ourselves when we heard a bang on the door. I opened it to find the neighbor, this time carrying two snow shovels. He handed one of them to me. "We have some work to do," he said, turning his back and wading toward the street.

My wife retired to the relative comfort of our one chair, and I took the borrowed shovel and followed the old man.

At the street, we met a young woman who also sported a snow shovel. After introductions, the neighbor explained things to me. "She's our neighbor's niece, and she has to get to the airport. They just opened the interstate, and the county just plowed Main Street, so if we can get her that far, she's got a chance."

I looked north - sure enough, the county plow had leveled the snow on Main Street, about 500 feet away.

As I looked around, I noticed three or four other men - more neighbors I barely knew - trudging through the hip-deep snow toward our street, shovels over their shoulders.

No one said another word. The five or six of us simply started shoveling a one-car-wide channel in the street, from the niece's car toward Main Street. We sang and whistled Christmas carols whenever we had the air to do so. It was almost dark when we broke through, about two hours later. We trudged back to help push her car into the track we'd shoveled, and away the niece went. As soon as she turned west on Main, without a word, each man shouldered his shovel and trudged toward home. My neighbor let me keep his snow shovel for another couple days.

I assume she made it to the Denver airport, but I never found out.

Now and then I think back on that Christmas, and I'm reminded of how blessed I have been. I also think it's an interesting metaphor concerning the struggle between self-reliance and victim-mentality our society is gripped by these days. How would folks handle this sort of thing these days? I like to think small-town Colorado folks would still pick up their shovels and dig themselves out, not waiting for someone else to do it for them, not complaining about the taxes they pay for snowplow service, not throwing their hands Heavenward and resigning themselves to missed flights and other disappointments.

Whether it's a hurricane, an oil rig accident, or some other calamity, it seems there are some folks who don't have enough of that personal-responsibility gene these days to count on themselves for the strength to overcome adversity. And in the U.S., our current government does seem to play to that weakness in us, insisting against the philosophy of President Kennedy that we should think about what our country could be doing for us before considering what we might be doing for ourselves.

So as the crickets sing happily outside my door on this hot August night, I'm thankful I don't have to shovel three feet of snow off a street to help a person I don't know make a flight she really needs to make.

And I'm also thankful that I, and my neighbors, are the kind of folks who'd jump out there with our shovels if help was needed.

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