Wayne Mercer, 82, brought out his snow blower and started cleaning sidewalks at 7th and Ohio this morning.

“It’s good. I love it, really,” Mercer said of his push snow machine. “I used to scoop this all by hand.”

The snow blower cuts down his sidewalk clearing time immensely. “It won’t take me very long – not when you have a snow blower.”

Just down the street, Conner and Carson Marsh, are doing their sidewalk clearing the old-fashioned way.

Conner, 5, says his favorite thing about the snow is “shoveling.”

“Put it in the yard so people don’t slip,” Conner said.

And he knows that he and his brother, 4, both adopted from Siberia two years ago, are helping their neighbors.

Conner and Carson were planning to take their snow-moving skills to the next level once they finished clearing sidewalks: A snowman will soon stand in their yard.

As for winter, Mercer has seen his share of bad ones since moving to Lawrence in 1966. “There’s been some kind of tough winters, but as far as really bad or tough, they’re not bad. As a rule, it don’t last too long.”