My father said he was going to yell, “Snow, you son of a gun, snow!” the first time a blizzard occurred after he retired.
Like me, he hated winter and all its attendant problems – slick sidewalks, colds, unplowed roads.
Once, he tried to bribe me to shovel the sidewalks, but I told him I’d pay him twice as much if he’d do it. (He did…and I paid up.)
He didn’t like cars that wouldn’t start, either. So, faithfully, he’d plug them in before he went to bed each night. We never had a problem with starters (come on, we’re from North Dakota; cars come with extension cords), but we did have to worry about slippery roads.
To fight them (and yes, it was a constant battle), he’d make sure we either had chains (look this one up, folks) or studded tires (which hadn’t been outlawed). We were so prepared, we could serve as an ambulance for folks in a five-county region.
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He also packed sand, salt and cardboard, in case tires got stuck. He filled the trunk with candy bars, water and candles and made sure to tell us about a woman he knew who was stranded with infant children and had to melt snow under her arms to give them something to drink. (The three of them apparently survived for days but my sister and I never had the guts to ask her – or the kids – what it was like.)
Instead, she was a cautionary tale (not unlike the woman who was hit in the head with a golf club by her husband), meant to keep us in line in case we dared brave the elements.
My sister has always been the daredevil in the family. One year when we were headed to grandma’s for Christmas, Dad actually let her drive on ice because he was sick. He said “slow down” so often I thought it was her name. She did a great job, though, and thereafter became known as the “expert” driver on ice. She was 16.
I had no desire to challenge her, particularly since “black ice” is a threat worse than death in North Dakota.
I encountered the devil on a trip home from college. Unaware the roads were slippery (yeah, I know), I drove at a pretty good clip, hit a patch of black ice and spun around like a merry-go-round. I wound up in a ditch and thought I was going to be left for dead. Luckily, a trucker wasn’t far behind and he was able to lead me out of the ditch and back on the road. (The best thing about North Dakota? Ditches aren’t deep.) He followed me to the next town, helped me call nearby relatives and made sure I knew the truth about black ice.
I shook until I got to their house, needed two Cokes and a brownie to calm my nerves and, after some hesitation, called home.
“Didn’t you know there was black ice?” Mom said. She paused, then tried to put a good spin on it: “Well, at least you didn’t hit a deer.”
That’s how our winter journeys went – a litany of hazards that could potentially keep you from reaching your destination, each ready to pounce at any given moment.
When Dad finally reached retirement age and didn’t have to battle a single blizzard, I thought it’d be good to find out what the feeling was like. On the first snowmageddon of the season, I called home and asked if they were hunkered in, thrilled to watch the flakes fall where they may.
“I guess it’s OK,” Mom said. “But I don’t know what Dad thinks about it. He went downtown to get the mail.”
Blizzards, you see, never got in the way of the mail.
