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Would you clear 200 yards of snow to help a friend? Dave Scarangella who lives in Ashburn, Virginia, is reminiscing about a time he and his neighbors did just that, during a big snowstorm back in 2003.
Scarangella told WTOP he remembers going out in the early evening to shovel and try to stay ahead of the multiple inches that were falling. Many of his neighbors were doing the same, when he asked one of them what turned out to be a timely and important question.
“I asked ‘How’s your wife doing?’ And he said, ‘She’s due any day now,'” he recalled.
Almost in unison, Scarangella said his neighbors turned to each other and said, “Any day now?”
They knew what they had to do, so they started digging and shoveling.
“We just carved out this one lane throughout the cul-de-sac,” he said.
He said the snow was so thick and it took a lot of effort to move.
“We chopped up the snow until it got low and then ran over it with a snow blower,” he said
Good thing they did, the next morning she went into labor.
It was hours of shoveling that night until 1 a.m.
“We were all tired and everything like that, but it was really cool,” Scarangella said.
He said it also brought the neighborhood together.
“You don’t get to see your neighbors a lot, but at least for that next couple of years we all chuckled about that,” he said.
Scarangella is almost 70 now and said his best shoveling days may be behind him.
“One of my neighbors has already yelled at me, ‘Don’t you go out in all of this,’” he said.
To that end, he’s hoping for a little karma with this storm that’s coming.
“I’m hoping for the kindness of other young people in the cul-de-sac,” he said.
