50's Farmer: The Blizzard of ‘21

“Wolf! Wolf!

It would be here on Wednesday evening, “they” said.

But Wednesday evening came, and nothing.

Then “they” said it would be here on Thursday. Thursday evening, nada.

On Friday evening, it really did come, in the form of drizzle and mist. “It” was to be two to four feet of snow. As of Friday, I was still betting on two to four inches.

In the story of Worthless William, the little boy who cried “Wolf!” To break the boredom of keeping sheep on a hillside near a forest, WW decided to yell “wolf” just to get a little company, someone other than the sheep.

The first two cries caused the citizens of the village below to drop whatever they were doing, grab cudgels and stones (no second amendment in this story) and head up the hill to protect the sheep from a marauding wolf. When they got there, they found nothing but Worthless and his sheep.

Then one day, the wolf really did come. “Wolf! Wolf! W-O-U-LF!” This time, the villagers really did NOT come. In some scarier versions of the story, the big bad wolf eschewed mutton and took Worthless William out for dinner.

Saturday, the rain continued with a few fat flakes falling, hitting, melting. By dark, some accumulation began to gather.

Sunday morning greeted us with more than my predicted four inches. As I looked out the window, I said, “The wolf really did come.”

The snowblower started all right. It was no match for the heavy wet snow. I went forty or fifty feet and might have kept battling for a while, except the clutch linkage, a bailing wire fix, gave up and so did I. I used Vice Grips to put the machine in reverse and back it out of the way.

The snow shovel wasn’t an answer either. The stuff was heavy and wet. And with the wind picking up, it was filling in as fast as I could shovel.

We have snowbirds for neighbors. Before departing for Florida, Ken bought a powerful two-stage blower and gave it to a neighbor with the understanding that the neighbor would keep Ken's walks clean all winter.

The neighbor was out and blew his way to my drive. I told him not to bother with the drive. Just get the sidewalk to the post boxes clean, which he did. The walk would get cleaned two or three more times by Monday noon, once more by snowblower and again a time or two with shovels.

I retired to the safety of indoors and read the Sunday paper on line. No way would the newspaper carrier be able to navigate the streets.

Trail to post boxes. “Trees” are normally six feet or higher.

On Monday, I repaired the clutch linkage on my blower and tried it again, but the wet snow plugged up the chute. The helpful neighbor came by again and cleared a path to the front door and in front of the garage doors. I told him to help the two ladies at the far end of the cul de sac, one of whom who was supposed to get to work. She didn’t make it. Nobody did.

“Tis an ill wind that blows no good,” the saying is. Everybody in the cul de sac was out shoveling, snowblowing, talking to each other, helping each other. That’s the first time that has happened in the six years we have lived here.

On Tuesday, I attacked the driveway again with the snowblower. It worked pretty well while it was still below freezing. The frozen snow was powdery enough to blow without plugging the chute. When the temperature warmed up, I started plugging up.

I wasn’t quite done, so I shoveled for a while. But then, I grew weary, and I had to get to a quartet practice. One of the guys agreed to pick me up which solved my problem and another one. The guy who hosted our practice at his house only had room to park one car.

Ted was able to turn around in the cul de sac with a few backs and forwards. I waded out to his car and away we went.

When we came back, he was able to pull into our driveway. Someone had cleared a ten foot path from where I had quit at the end of my drive, out into the center of the cul de sac. I could get out now.

I made another discovery after Ted left me. The door was locked. I had no key and no garage door opener. I was locked out. No problem.

I rang the doorbell. Twice. A third time. No answer. Looking in, I could see lights all off. Had the Goodwife taken advantage of the newly-cleared pathway and gone shopping somewhere?

No problem. Call her cell phone. No answer. Call again. No answer. Ring the doorbell again. No response.

There is a key outside. In the back yard. I had to slug all along the house in the deep snow. As I passed the garage, I peered in to see the car still parked there. Uh oh. I began to panic a bit.

Pathway to the backyard.

Fortunately, I left the snow shovel just outside the front door. With the shovel, I dug enough to free the latched gate. I managed to get the gate open wide enough for me to sneak through. I slugged through the drifts to the shed where the key is hidden.

Back I went as fast as I could. I was just ready to insert the key into the door when the Goodwife appeared at the window. She unlocked the door and I was in.

“Thank God you’re alive! Why the heck didn’t you answer the door? Or your phone?”

She was in the basement, couldn’t hear the doorbell, the phone in the bedroom, couldn’t hear it either.

Enough excitement for Tuesday. As we stood there by the door, a road grader and a frontend loader tractor came and shoved some snow out of the cul de sac. The loader picked up the snow the grader bladed up and dumped it in a pile on the corners where the cul de sac borders the street. The piles blocked the sidewalk a bit, and some of the grader’s windrow blocked the path someone (Neighbor Tom it turns out) had cleared from my drive to the center of the cul de sac.

I finished my day out of doors by shoveling the windrow into two piles and my way was clear again. We were back to some semblance of normal after the blizzard of ’21. Icy streets will be around for a week or so. Snow piles will last longer. Some of them are huge.

I am reminded of a snowy cold winter in Kansas, where for entertainment, a group of energetic citizens started a pool to see who could accurately predict how long the huge pile of snow in the center of the street in front of the courthouse would take to completely melt.

You paid your dollar and entered a day, month, hour, and minute the pile would be gone. For a while the judges selected to determine a complete melt down, met once a week, then once a day, and finally, they stood around on a warm sunny afternoon and determined when there was only water left.

The contest wasn’t as close as one might expect, as the snow lasted quite a lot longer than most guesses. It might be fun to do something like that this year, say in King Soopers’ parking lot.

Some people didn’t have enough to keep them busy in the storm's aftermath.