What you have heard is true. I shot my snow thrower. Dead.

Six years ago I bought a cheap snow thrower at Sears. When I lived in Henniker, with a 30' blacktop driveway, it was a great thing. I could hardly wait for the snow to fall and often didn't wait for the storm to pass but instead went out and cleared the driveway two and three times.

Then we moved to Wentworth. My driveway is gravel and I no longer have a garage to keep it in. Those two factors began to take a toll...over the past three years I spent approximately $710,000 in repairs (I'm just guessing...the figure may be much higher). The thing NEVER ran when I needed it. And this winter, with almost ten feet of snow, I needed it a lot. Worse--far worse--than not owning a snow thrower in New Hampshire is owning one that never works no matter how much you spend on it.

I don't have that problem anymore.

When I finally snapped--breathless and sore in the back from pulling the starter cord 922 times--I started by kicking the machine. Then I tried to swing it into the yard like an Olympic hammer thrower. When I got up off of the ground, I tried to imagine loading the thing into the trunk of my car and taking it to the same small-engine repair joint in Plymouth that has managed to put in a hot-tub and a chandelier since my snow thrower and I moved to town.

But instead I pulled and yanked and wrestled the piece of junk around the house to the back yard and positioned it on the edge of a drop-off above the brook. I stomped back into the house where Tab asked how it was going out there. Her father was sitting at the table so I tried to control my language. "It's going great." I said between gritted teeth. "I'm going to shotgun the snow thrower now." Tab just watched me stalk off down the hall.

When I emerged with the shotgun and a box of slugs, she seemed genuinely surprised. Maybe she didn't hear me the first time. But neither her nor her father said anything as I stomped out the door with gun in one hand and the shells in the other.

By the time I loaded the gun and then repositioned the snow thrower to reduce the chances of an errant slug hitting my neighbors' house, a few minutes had passed. I imagined stalking the snow thrower in it's natural habitat (probably the snow-less deserts of New Mexico for this particular species--crapicus norunicus). Here and there in the sandy soil, a tell-tale wheel track would give away it's direction. By pinching a sage leaf, I could smell the 40:1 gas mixture and determine how many hours before the snow thrower had passed through. Here and there, receipts and check stubs indicated where it had fed. Finally, as the sun came over the mountains, I spotted it on the rim of the canyon. What's this? It's about to charge that campsite full of sleeping children below?

Not on my watch.

BLAM!ch-chunk.

BLAM!ch-chunk.

BLAM!ch-chunk.

Was it good? Damn right. So good that I reloaded and pumped three more shots into it. Oh sure, I would have loved it if, as in the movies, the force of the blast had blown it over the lip of the drop-off. But it was flippin' sweet.

The following picture shows the damage, CSI New Hampshire style:

But the story get's better. Flashback: last summer, while Tab and I were away on an errand, our daughters were playing outside with the dog when a strange car pulled into the driveway. One of the two women in the car asked my oldest if her parents were home. When she said we would be right back, the woman asked, "When your parents die, do you think they'll go to heaven? Do you think they're saved?" My daughter didn't know how to answer that so she gathered her sister and said they needed to go inside.

I was furious when I got home.

Fast forward six months. The church ladies are out saving souls and they see by the number of cars in our driveway that there may be sinners inside. They walk carefully up the unshoveled driveway and knock on the door. Tab answers. "Is the man of the house home?" they ask. Oh yeah, the man of the house. Before Tab can formulate a response appropriate to 1958 all three jerk their heads toward the back of the house -- BLAM!... BLAM!... BLAM!

Tab turns back to them. "That's him," she says. "He's shooting the snow blower. He should be in in a minute."

They didn't stick around.

Got a machine that won't cooperate? A chainsaw that won't start? A mower who's wheel keeps coming off? I can take care of that for you. I can make it look like an accident or I can send a message to all of the other machines in the shed: "Briggs and Stratton sleeps with the fishes."