ORIG./ The Bulletin employee in The Bulletin studio in Bend Wednesday morning 10-30-13. Andy Tullis/The Bulletin ORIG./ The Bulletin employee in The Bulletin studio in Bend Wednesday morning 10-30-13. Andy Tullis/The Bulletin

I don’t know about you, but my Thanksgiving plans did not include a 14-inch snowfall followed by at least five days of subfreezing temperatures. That said, the rotten weather worked to create one of the nicest Thanksgivings I’ve ever celebrated.

Early in 2013, my family and I picked up and moved from the house we’d lived in most of the last 30 years. It was a difficult task — 30 years to accumulate stuff and the largest attic among my parents’ six children guaranteed that.

It didn’t take long to discover I’d moved into what I’ll call a “real” neighborhood, one with sidewalks, no busy streets and lots of kids. It’s the kind of place where couples stroll on summer evenings, folks walk their dogs both morning and night and, as they did last week, kids sled down the steepest driveway on the block, generally unconcerned about the possibility of dangerous traffic.

But back to last week.

The storm that stated Tuesday and carried into Wednesday morning did a couple of things. It dumped a bit over 13 inches of snow onto the street and just about everything else, for one thing. City crews were busy all night, no doubt, and they reached our neighborhood early — 4 a.m. or so — Wednesday morning. I’m glad they did, though my first reaction was far less benign when I realized they had pushed a berm of snow into every driveway they went by.

And, wind during the storm and the weight of the snow combined to bring down a major limb on the pine tree on the corner of the property. It managed to fall across the entire driveway. I could find someone to remove the limb, but not until the day after Thanksgiving.

Thus, by shortly after 8 a.m. Wednesday I’d reached the low point of the holiday.

Thank goodness I like to shovel snow, at least in short spurts, and it’s particularly nice when the rest of the world is still quiet. This wasn’t going to be a short-spurt effort, however.

Not long after I began, the man housesitting for the family across the street turned up. He offered to help, and, no fool I, I said that would be great. Thanks to his efforts a job that should have taken most of the morning took only about an hour.

Meanwhile, my sister and her son stopped by with a small pork roast and potatoes — our last-minute Thanksgiving dinner. I already had Brussels sprouts on hand and enough apples for a small apple crisp.

Probably because I didn’t have my snow tires on, the thought of being forced to stay home for a couple of days didn’t really bother me much.

It was a pleasant surprise, however, Thursday morning when the doorbell rang a bit before 9. Another neighbor, Charlie, was at the door. He and a friend wanted to know if they could remove the limb from the driveway. I don’t know how long they took, but I do know that I was, and am, extremely grateful for their efforts.

My good fortune continued. Friday, another neighbor came by, pushing a snowblower. Would I mind, he asked, if he blew my sidewalk clean? Mind? I don’t think so. By midmorning Friday, thanks to the efforts of neighbors, I had a shoveled driveway, including a path through the snow berm, no tree limb and a truly spiffy sidewalk.

All that good fortune pretty much sums up where I’m living these days.

It’s a real neighborhood, in every good sense of the word. We are a community, small perhaps, but a complete community just the same. We know one another, not always terribly well, but we do know each other. Most important, we help where and when we can.

It adds up to something pretty special, it seems to me. It’s the kind of neighborhood I grew up in, a place with a “Leave It to Beaver” quality about it, even if all the moms do work outside the home and the parents — myself included — aren’t particularly perfect. It feels safe enough for children to spend time outside without much obvious supervision and for women to walk in the evening unaccompanied.

I worry sometimes that Bend is losing neighborhoods like mine. I hope not. My neighborhood and others like it make for good citizens, I think, the kind of caring people who learn as children that helping one another can be one of the true blessings of life.

— Janet Stevens is deputy editor of The Bulletin. Contact: 541-617-7821, jstevens@bendbulletin.com