It was Christmas break of, I think, 1983. It hadn’t been above zero Fahrenheit all month. It really hadn’t bothered me much. My ’62 Mercury started every morning and got me to school. The landscape looked like a post card with the fluffy snow covering everything in a blanket of white. There was always a fire in the fireplace when I got home from school.
The weekends were the only time I had to be outside, and when you’re a teenager, you don’t put much thought into how much the cold slows all projects down. Diesel would not flow and it plugged fuel filters, water pipes and hydrants froze, cornstalks were covered with snow, and a person had to do everything with mittens on. Those weren’t things I was concerned about sitting in a warm classroom, but they did fill my weekends. I got to chop ice and pitch it out of the tanks onto the mountain of existing ice from every day before. I filled the feed wagon and buckets with silage, which was a treat, because the silage was warm, and I got to thaw frozen pipes, which is where this story is leading.
As the years passed, I have learned that my dad and my brother’s less than stellar attitudes were merited by the time Christmas break rolled around. My experiences as a stockman have taught me that it’s no fun to feed valuable hay because the cornstalks are covered in snow, and there are better aerobic workouts than chopping ice and swearing. Calves don’t gain weight and equipment breaks down with alarming frequency when it’s freeze your nose hair cold.
Everyone has a tipping point. my brother’s always seemed to happen when I was with him. We had gone over to chop ice out of the stock tanks on the pivot. The tanks were up in an old farmstead, and filled out of a frost free hydrant. That was OK, but the person who lived in the old house would leave the door to the cellar open so his dogs could sleep down in it to stay warm. It would cause the water pipes in the cellar, which fed the hydrant, to freeze. I didn’t know it, but several times a week, Dad and my brother were taking the propane torches over to thaw the pipes so they could water the cows.
On a rather bitter, gray, school free morning, we headed over to check water and found the tank full of ice, the pipes frozen, and the cows thirsty. We had forgot the propane tanks, and headed home to get them. My brother took it well, initially.
About halfway up the long driveway, his ice scraper slid down right in front of where he looked out the window. It was one of those plastic handled scrapers with a brush on one end, scraper on the other and gas station advertisement in the middle. He kept it on the sun visor, and for some reason, it wouldn’t stay that morning. He reached up and popped it back onto the visor, but about a hundred yards later, it slid down again. He used just a little more zeal in returning it to its place that time. We turned onto the road home and were going way to fast when it slid down for about the forth time. That’s when things took a turn for the worse.
A lot of variables played into the next part of the story. Excessive speed and the fragile mental state that cold weather causes were only two of them. The sun visor was not only for storing an ice scraper, but was also where six months of receipts, parts lists, to do lists, random mail and some bank statements were filed. The last time the scraper slid down, he reached up and jerked it, and all other contents of the visor, down. It didn’t just fall into his lap. Because of the frigid temps, we had to leave the windows down a little so the front windshield wouldn’t fog over. The polar vortex going through the cab, turned us into a 3/4 ton, green and yellow snow globe. One of the figures in the snow globe began breaking the ice scraper over his knee into tiny plastic pieces. The other figure stared out the passenger window as they slid sideways down the snow packed road to their impending doom.
What I remember most, was my brother angrily throwing the remains of the scraper on the pickup floor then looking out my window, realizing that no one had been driving for awhile. He said, “Ah, shit.” Good fortune, or an incredibly frazzled guardian angel guided us into the ditch that was level full of powdery snow. We couldn’t see anything through the snow blowing over the hood. We came to a stop, unscathed, locked it in four wheel drive and drove home very quietly. Not much was said the rest of the day, but Dad made sure the cows got water.
Farmer Dan's Food For Thought 