THE WINTER OF 1979 took a chunk out of my soul. My wife, two sons, and I were living in the Chicago suburb of Evanston where I was attempting to pioneer a church from scratch. On New Years Eve several feet of snow fell; for a day or two the streets were impassable. We lived in an apartment with no garage and parked our '73 Plymouth Fury on the street. The snowplows finally came through, but they piled a high ridge of snow against the cars parked along the curb. I had to shovel for two hours to get my car out.

But that was only the beginning. When I returned from my errand to the grocery store, someone else had pulled into the spot I had cleared and I had to shovel to get my car into another unplowed space. For three months, almost every time I came or went in my car, I had to shovel more snow. The already limited street parking became even more scarce, and I would often have to park several blocks from our apartment.

And the snow kept falling. It came in wave upon wave, interspersed with ...