Karen Wils photo Mark and Dad Rose remove snow from a camp roof. Dad uses a homemade roof rake, and Mark uses a trusty old shovel. Circa 1980.

ESCANABA — If the old shovels in the shed could talk… would they reminisce about the blizzards of yesterday?

If the scoops, roof rakes and ice chisels in the garage got to gabbing, would they talk about mitten-covered hands and the below-zero temperatures?

Winters make an impression in the U.P.

Big snowstorms and deep freezes go down in history. It takes a hardy, strong-willed person to live here.

We must combat winter every year with a tough Yooper attitude and an arsenal of good snow removal tools.

A deep, gruff voice came from the old antique shovel in the corner. “Rusty” spoke with authority and said, “Four generations of the Smith family have shoveled snow with me. Let me tell you the Michigan blizzard of 1967 pitted me and Grandpa against three feet of snow. We had three balmy January days and then BOOM, snow like crazy.”

“Ahemm,” the homemade snow scoop cleared his voice after a long off-season. “Michigan blizzard fiddle sticks. I took a bite out of the Great Blizzard of 1978 with Pa Smith making me move. There we were man and snow scoop against nature. We battled wind gusts of 50 to 70 miles per hour that day.”

Now it was time for the shiny plastic shovel to speak.

“I beg your pardon old-timers, but I was the go-to-guy during the North American blizzard of 1999. That teenage Smith boy worked me hard for two days. School was canceled for two days and the world was a whiteout.”

A chuckle came from the far side of the garage. The snow blower chimed in.

“How soon we forget. How about all of that wet, heavy snow we had late in November of 2019? All of that back-breaking hard-packed snow I threw out of the way,” bragged the snow blower.

U.P. winters are wonderful in some ways. They make us slow down a bit. They make us proud of our ancestors. They provide cheap fun on the snowshoe and ski trails.

They also make us appreciate the spring and summer months a lot more too.

So far the winter has been a very mild one, but that can change in a few hours. Listen to the weather man. You might have to go talk to the tools in your shed.

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Karen (Rose) Wils is a lifelong north Escanaba resident. Her folksy columns appear weekly in Lifestyles.

Photo courtesy Mark Rose
Karen’s brother Mark says of the photo above, “The snow scoop shown here came from my grandfather’s house over in Gladstone back in about 1971. My uncle Richard made it from materials he had on hand. The three sides of the scoop were made of elm lumber which he had cut out at camp, the metal bottom once was Grandpa’s 34 Plymouth’s roof.”