Neighbors shovel out neighbors
On countless streets around the suburbs, neighbors inspired by the challenge of a blizzard showed their best side, helping each other out in ways that brought great warmth to a cold day.
Dreading her shoveling job, Stell Moorhouse in Palatine waved down a red tow truck for help. While the driver plowed her very long driveway, she ran and got her checkbook.
“When he was done, he honked and waved, and didn't charge me anything,” Moorhouse said, calling the driver “an angel” in an e-mail. “I held up my checkbook, but he just kept going. I can't tell you the joy I felt.”
In north Hoffman Estates, a small army of four families armed with snowblowers shovels gathered Wednesday afternoon to clear the drive of Bob Florio while his family was at his mother's funeral.
The Chameli family in the Charlemagne subdivision was cleaning their driveway and planning to tackle Florio's next, while across the street Darshana Mehta and her daughter were struggling with their snowblower while her husband was out of town. Two of her neighbors came over to help, one operating Mehta's machine and another with his own snowblower.
Kathy Chameli, working with her husband David, son D.J., 17, and daughter Anna, 14, asked if they all would be willing to help with the Florios drive. Thirty minutes later, it was done.
“We still had gas — literally and figuratively,” Kathy Chameli said, so the crew moved on to clear the driveway of a man caring for elderly parents and a single mom raising two young boys, while Darshana Mehta made hot chocolate. “We just had a lot of fun,” she added.
And that's the way it was as the area dug out. On the 1600 block of Oak Street in Hanover Park, “we have such a wonderful group of neighbors,” a caller began, unfolding yet another story of caring neighbors, cleared driveways and hot chocolate.