plow this, baby

oh gary. wherefore art thou, gary gilbert?

my last phone number was previously owned by gary gilbert. gary owned a snowplowing business. so whenever so much as a flake was forecast, our phone rang off the hook. why did gary leave an obviously successful snowplowing business? who knows but he left the phone number behind quite swiftly (at least according to his customers).

"is gary there?"

"i want to make sure gary is coming tomorrow to do my driveway."

"hello, hello, gary? gary? it's mrs. putz again. gar-r-r-y?"

nevermind that these messages were left on our answering machine. my husband's laid-back drawl very specifically says who you had reached and it wasn't gary. we were dealing with blue-hairs. if their phone book says this is gary's number, well, who were we to argue any differently?

we felt bad for these elderly women. they rarely left return numbers in their messages so that we could call them back and let them know that gary wasn't coming. most of the messages were of them wondering how to leave a message..."hello, is this recording? can you hear me gary? gar-r-r-y?"

i had visions of elderly women trapped in their mile-long suburban driveways. old women sharing cat food with fluffy because they couldn't get to acme to load up on milk and bread. all because of damn gary.

we tried calling the phone company about how to track down gary. the few callers we actually spoke to were peeved that we didn't know gary's new phone number. how many people actually call their old number and let the new owner know where to forward their calls? but like i said, we were dealing with older women and the phone company couldn't (or wouldn't) give out his new number.

"these are old women," i pleaded with the phone rep, "they need to reach this guy or else they will be eating cat food."

privacy rules, they argued. they couldn't even tell me when he last owned the number. since we inherited the number in october, we could at least pinpoint it that far back. and the callers we spoke to remember using gary the previous winter.

gary had to be in over his head. why else run out on his steady stream of blue-haired customers? instead, we were left holding gary's bag of business without a plow.

if either my husband or i drove a car that could handle a snowplow, we could have made a ton of money those two winters we lived in that place. when we moved, we were a little sad (and a little relieved) to see the number go.

we had a new home without any of gary's guilt.

until last winter, when we got the first forecast of snow. "gar-r-r-y? hello, gary?" the phone company put a forwarding message with our new number on the old number we shared with gary.

the old ladies desperately seeking gary managed to update their phone books with our new number. i gotta get a snowplow.