This is the first time I’ve ever felt the need to write a review of something on here and that’s saying something! I

would give “The Portable Snowplow” zero stars if I could! It pains me to say so too, because I thought that it was a great idea that showed a lot of promise. Heck, the kid who done created it, Ricky Thompson, sweet kid, or so I thought, lived a few blocks down the street from me. Ricky played hockey with my son, I helped him out with his Eagle Scout project and told him that I wouldn’t mind a fella like him taking my daughter to her senior prom. My little sweetheart ultimately had to go to prom by herself, which she said was fine because she and the gals were going to have a good time no matter what, but when she got home that night, she locked herself in her room and hasn’t talked about it since. I went on to find out Ricky couldn’t go to his senior prom because that weekend he was flying out to Los Angeles to appear on Shark Tank. You know the one? The program on ABC? He was reaching out to some mucky-muck big shots to get funding for his invention, “The Portable Snowplow,” the very one I’m reviewing today. Now initially, I was happy for little Ricky, he was following his dreams, getting out of North Dakota, gonna make something of himself, unlike my son, who never really pulled himself up by his bootstraps after he blew out his knee and lost his hockey scholarship. That summer when the episode of Shark Tank aired featuring “The Portable Snowplow” was the first time I even learned that little Ricky was interested in entrepreneurship. I could’ve shown him a thing or two! I’d been regional manager down at the Hank & Sons hardware store for the past 15 years! 

The judges loved him, especially the lady judge with blonde hair, and why not? He was handsome, clean-cut,

shaven, had a firm handshake, and didn’t have blue hair or painted fingernails like all these other lazy kids I see running around the neighborhood nowadays. Supposedly this here, portable snowplow was a spray that came in a can, and around the blistering winters, like the ones we got out here, could be used to clear up your driveway of snow and even prevent new snow from collecting. You know? So you don’t have to keep clearing the driveway before work? Sounded real nifty if you asked me. He was always working on his little science projects, but he didn’t have too much street smarts if I knew him right.

           I went next door the very next day to congratulate the kid on landing a multimillion-dollar deal with 15% equity and offered him some help with the management side of things. You know? Just to make sure he isn’t getting jerked around by all the big-shot mucky mucks with their fancy suits and limousines. Mr. Thompson came to the door and told me Ricky had already packed his bags and took off to Los Angeles to start the manufacturing process of “The Portable Snowplow,” so it’d be ready to hit the market that winter. Sounded like a pretty sweet deal if you asked me because that winter was to be a doozy!

           A couple of months later things weren’t doing so great on the home front. The missus was blaming me for what a disappointment my two kids had become.

           “Heck! It’s only been a few months! Sometimes kids just need to get their legging!’

           And we didn’t have the money to send them to some fancy-pants college all on our own. To make matters worse, my daughter started dating some real rough and tumble older fella who lived in a trailer and sold the crystal methamphetamine. You know? Kinda like the stuff from that “Being Bad” show? The missus and I watched it back when we could afford cable, a little too artsy for my taste, but it made my old lady happy, so heck I enjoyed it too.

           Problem was my son fell into a deep depression on accounta things not panning out the way he wanted them to. I tried to make him feel better by reminding him that even if he did play hockey out at college, making it to the pros was a whole other ordeal, and if he didn’t get a wake-up call then, he’d have to learn it four years down the line. This only made him feel worse. Heck, you try your best to provide a better life for your family than you ever dreamed of as a kid, but things went ahead and changed so much since I was growing up.

           That winter as I was getting ready to close shop, some feller from some sort of shipping department came in with boxes full of some goods for the store and I was double dog-darned to see that “The Portable Snowplow” was here and ready to hit the shelves. I bought myself a whole case, didn’t even use my manager's discount, and wanted Little Ricky’s company to hit the ground running!

           I got home excited to show my family Ricky’s invention, but they had gotten some seasonal depression to go on top of their existential depression and it was really just starting to stink up the place. The only thing I could get the missus to say on the matter was:

 “Maybe if you showed this kind of enthusiasm for your own kids, they would be doing better right now.”

          A fellas gotta know when to fold em’ so I paid her no mind and instead went right out to my driveway and tried out little Ricky’s invention, and woah boy did it work like a charm!

           The only work I had to do was spray the driveway once a week and just like that, I was ready to go! I was so excited I even sprayed it all over my lawn, that way I could show my perfectly mowed lawn to the neighbors all year long. Everyone knows I take care of my lawn better than just about anyone you ever did meet and now I got to take pride in it all year long. Great because I really needed something to take pride in during this chapter in my life.

           But would ya guess what? As springtime reared its head around the corner, I realized that “The Portable Snowplow” didn’t just get rid of the snow but completely obliterated my once beautiful lawn. The grass, the soil, the ferns on the side lawn, all destroyed by chemicals so thick and potent that I would have to dig up my entire lawn eight feet deep to replace the soil and grow new turf without it dying. It was some real scientific stuff, a subject I didn’t know a whole lot about. I was so livid that I hadn’t noticed that my old lady had been falling out of love with me over the past nine months and I guess being more upset about my deteriorating lawn than my deteriorating family must’ve been the final nail in the coffin. One day I came home to discover her car and the rest of her belongings were all gone. I asked my Son, who was on the couch eating a bag of Chips a-Hoy cookies (a mighty fine cookie if you ask me): “what gives?” He just unenthusiastically informed me that the missus was moving in with her sister all the way out in Bakersfield, California and I should be expecting some papers in the mail soon.

           Unlike my lazy son, I wasn’t one to wallow in self-pity, so I made the best of the situation and thought I’d do something I couldn’t do in my married life: drink fine whiskey. I hadn’t hardly had anything to drink in those twenty-five years since I didn’t want my kids to see me inebriated but hell, they were adults now, my daughter had seen way crazier things than drinking at this point and she wasn’t around here anymore so I thought: “hey! I’m just taking the edge off with a little Wild Turkey, no harm in that.” Wild Turkey was my favorite, a little strong for folks with a weak pallet like my sissy neighbor Mr. Thompson. I was willing to bet his son had a sissy pallet as well, a thought that made me smile for the first time in months. Well, gosh darn it though, one drink turned into at least ten bottles over the course of two weeks.

           As I came to discover during my two-week bender, I called my boss and told him that I knew more about hardware than he did and done got myself fired. But worse, I filed a lawsuit against little Ricky and his “The Portable Snowplow” company as payback for ruining my life, but wouldn’t you know it? The fine print specifies not to use the spray on natural terrain as it only promises to clear artificial terrain typically concrete driveways not the greenery of side yards. Ricky didn’t counter-sue, so I mean, way to be the bigger man I guess, but I think he was just avoiding unnecessary turmoil because wouldn’t you know it, he had gone out for some dinner with my now ex-old lady the first month she got to California and the two were now going steady. Kinda peculiar young men chasing older women, used to go the other way around. Come to think of it, the two did act kinda odd around one another during his Eagle Scout project.

I was down and out so what did I do? The only thing that made sense. I went to the store to buy more Wild Turkey,

but wouldn’t you know it? I got pulled over on the way back from the liquor store and found myself spending the night in the county drunk tank, the first time back since I was 19. The sheriff was this dork I used to mess with in high school and I guess as payback, he thought he’d be a real wise guy and put me in a holding cell with a real scary-looking white-supremacist looking fella, supposedly going down for blowing up a trailer while the owner was still inside. Didn’t feel too safe catching any shuteye that night.

           The whole experience sent me to the hospital for one of those detox programs on accounta that I still had a lot of booze in my system. As it turns out, I could have died from the withdrawal symptoms if I tried to get off the sauce on my own. Was sorta looking forward to being waited on hand and foot for once in my life but wouldn’t you know it? My daughter who I hadn’t talked to in months was in the very same detox program. Now I was having a real good time in the hospital, caught up on my reading, found out the Milwaukee Bucks were having a mighty fine season, and thought maybe things were starting to look up. My daughter sure didn’t wanna talk to me though, which made me feel a little sore. Figured she just needed her space, so I let it be I guess. The final night before I was to be discharged, tosses out to make a sturdy attempt at rebuilding what was left of my life, my little angel finally stopped by my room to let me know that she was sorry for everything and was confused because she’d never been in love with a boy before. Apparently, that older feller she was going steady with, had bad blood with some of his competition, and the ruffian, one of those white supremacist types, went right ahead and blew up his trailer while he was still in it. She said they got the feller who did it so that helped her sleep at night, but the police found her running down the interstate looking for help after she saw the fire. Thank God she wasn’t hurt. I was proud of my girl for checking herself in to get off that awful methamphetamine stuff they got down there. I just wound up holding her as she cried and apologized, just like when she was little. One of the nurses done came by after about an hour or so and said we couldn’t be in each other’s rooms. I told her of our relation, but she just told me: “rules are rules sir, can’t be giving special treatment around here, it’d be a real madhouse.”

I’d reckoned it already was.

           My baby girl was in detox a little longer than me, so I got her old room ready and wound-up finding work doing what they call “freelance” making yard repairs for folk in the neighborhood. Kinda got a knack for it and started making better money than before without some boss who didn’t know as much about hardware as me. I really got put through the ringer there but I’ve gotta admit, I’d say things are better now than before. I got my little girl back and even got my own business. My son went ahead and moved to Los Angeles to live with his mother and her new fancy-pants millionaire boyfriend Little Ricky Thompson, which is mighty strange if ya ask me. If my own mother went steady with some kid I went to school with, I’d give him a real piece of my mind, and by that, I mean I’d sock him right there in the jaw. But I’ve been going to a counselor to work on my outbursts and hell if I get a brand-new life out of the deal, I guess my ex-old lady deserves to be happy too, and holding a grudge against that there Ricky Thompson wasn’t going to do me any favors. However, my lawn is still in ruins and as a result, I cannot recommend this product to anyone.