Uff da! We really got dumped on. This has been one of those old-fashioned blizzards. An old farmer once told me, “Big snow, little snow. Little Snow, big snow.” He was right again. The snow started on Tuesday afternoon. “Little” flakes, almost like sleet. Sure enough, it ended up being a very “Big” snow. It came down for at least 24 hours, accompanied by 40+ mile-an-hour winds that created blowing and drifting snow, not to mention whiteout conditions. We had all the ingredients for an old-fashioned blizzard. Not the mother of all blizzards that many of you remember from 1959, but this gave us a good taste of one.
Luckily I put new tires on my Cavalier last week. I needed them today. And... I bought a snow blower the day before it began. It did pain me to do it, especially in the pocketbook, but thank heavens I did. We had three-foot drifts through most of our 75-foot driveway. The snow blower had its hands full, but I was able to sort of clear it early this morning. It drifted back in about as fast as I made a path. No matter which direction I blew the snow, it came back in my face. I must have looked like an overdressed snowman by the time I finished. Luckily, a neighbor came with his skid steer and pushed the snow way back from the driveway. It only took a few minutes. Who needs a snow blower if you have a skid steer?
The phone company is like the post office, no matter what the weather, we’ll be there, so I headed to work. I managed to buck the drifts on Sherpe Road with my “Silver Bullet” Cavalier with four new tires and didn’t get stuck. We did shut the place down an hour early so everyone could get home before it got dark.
At least the plow had gone through Sherpe Road, but I had to clear the driveway again. The drifts were just as big as they had been in the morning. That’s too much stress on a new blower and an old operator.
As I finished clearing my driveway, I thought of what my brother, David, had written me on a recent, foggy, case weather day. He said, “On my drive into work this morning, I couldn’t help thinking about taking down tobacco. I remember Pearly Stenslien helping us at his shed one year. When we took down the last lath he said, ‘If we had started with that one first, we’d have been done a long time ago.’” I wonder if that reasoning could apply to clearing our driveway too.
It’s really gotten cold too. I think I’ve had enough snow now and I’m ready for spring!! Enough with the song, “Let It Snow.” I should never have mentioned it last week. It’s really blowing up here on the prairie. Imagine tomorrow morning we’ll have to go through the whole process again. Now that we have snow, it’s going to be so cold for the next week that it’s dangerous to stay outside very long. So much for the wooly caterpillar predicting the winter weather and being right 70% of the time. This was supposed to be a mild winter, according to the length of their black “wool.”
I’ve often wondered about the sanity of our ancestors. They had this whole country to choose from when they came from Norway and they decided to settle in the frozen tundra. Uff da, we Norskies could be sitting in the sun on our porch down south, watching those poor devils “Up Nort,” suffering through a cold and snowy winter. But, here we are.
I guess I shouldn’t complain. The way it looks now, we’ll have a white Christmas. When you’re used to having snow at Christmas, it wouldn’t be the same with brown grass and warm weather. Santa needs some snow for his sleigh and reindeer to land on.
When I think back to when I was young and Santa was very real, I never questioned how a chubby guy in a red, furry suit, could get into our house with his bag of presents. We didn’t have a fireplace, just a stovepipe that attached to a hot kitchen stove and a hole in the chimney. If Santa slid down our chimney he would have to squeeze through that stovepipe, and then exit into a blazing, hot fire, and somehow kick open the door of the kitchen stove and crawl out. I knew it would take some real magic to accomplish such a feat. There was a flue you could open in the side of the stovepipe. Maybe he squeezed through that little opening. For a kid who liked to question everything, it’s surprising that I accepted Santa performing such magical feats. When I finally asked my mother, she said he came in through a door or window if people didn’t have a fireplace. That made sense to me.
I don’t recall that we ever had an old-fashioned blizzard on Christmas Eve, but I’m positive Santa would have found us with the help of Rudolph. I still associate that song with Gene Autry who recorded it in 1949, when I was five years old.
We all have lots of memories associated with blizzards, songs, and Christmas. May you have a wonderful Christmas and create many new memories.
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