I wrote this last week before coming to services and making copies of Bill's fine bulletin. Or else wrote it today, last week. I guess it depends on your perspective. It's completely non-religious, except for this: I wonder what those who didn't understand Jesus' parables went away with when he was done?

Stop me if you heard this one before.

A sower went out to sow. Except it wasn't seed he was sowing, it was salt. And it wasn't really a sower, it was me.

You see, last week I scraped all that fluffy (concrete) snow off my driveway to find there was a nice thick layer of ice underneath. There was nothing to do for it but throw out some salt and hope for the best.

I've seen this stuff before. Luckily, my driveway faces east so the morning sun pours down on it. However, when light alone hits it, the ice melts a little but then as darkness returns it freezes up again. Salt, though, is just the ticket. When you throw salt on it, the salt drills down through little holes to the heart of the matter below - the pavement. Then it spreads out under that ice and disconnects it from the ground. At (east in a perfect world that is how it seems to work.

What I've noticed is that alt sorts of different things could happen, depending on the conditions. For instance, it could be too cold. If that ground is frozen as hard as the ice then the ice just won't let go. They sort of weld together. Fortunately this rarely happens, there's some heat in the ground. It might be waaaaay down in there, but it's there.

If it's a shady area or dark at night, the salt doesn't work well. Oh, it digs in but not much happens. The salt needs light to help it along. This is the edge of my driveway, where the snow "assists" the ice by piling up nice and high and blocking the sun's light from reaching it. The more snow we get, the higher the piles.

Sometimes the ice is so thick the salt drills down apparently out of sight of the light and the ice closes in over it. Then the salt stops there, wasted, helpless to do any more good. I didn't use enough salt. More ice needs more salt!

But those places where it works right, boy does it work right!!! You can hear the salt working, as if the ground was yearning for it. Snaps and cracks, sometimes as loud as rifle shots, as the ice breaks up. The light gets to work on it, and the salt water (once ice as hard as iron but now full of salt) spreads faster and faster as it has success.The slightly warm ground starts to absorb that heat and it just gets warmer and warmer, until you can see the steam from the evaporating water (the ex-ice! it sure is taxing on my patience ) rising back up into the air.

When the darkness comes again, and dark will do that. these latter places resist refreezing. In fact many have eliminated all the water and ice and the darkness can't touch them anymore. They can be so warm that even if we get another dusting of snow the snow won't stick here, it just melts away. Success!!!

Yep, I just wanted to tell you about my ice removal experiences. I'm sure there's a good bulletin in there somewhere, if only I had "eyes to see it."

Randy