Winters back when . . . .

Well, here’s another one I started and never finished, this was from last winter on a real cold day. Today’s not so cold, but seasonal, and some snow on the ground.
Everybody has been whining about winter and the weather. I keep saying it’s just that we have had a few easy winters and this is more like what it used to be.
Some winters I remember:
here would be one ‘big’ storm, at least, every year, where there’d be 1 ½ to 2 feet of snow, instead of the under 1 foot from the usual storms. After one of these, I guess I was about 14, so it would have been about 1957 or so, we had a storm that snowed and blew so much that the road coming up to our farm, which had high banks on each side, was completely blocked in about 4 to 5 feet deep. My father was away and the neighbor was helping us with milking the cows, we loaded the cans of milk to go to the diary in Hudson, and the car could not even get out of the driveway - and carrying the cans back to the milk house we managed to drop one and spill it - my father kept asking why the dogs were always licking the snow in that one spot but we just said 'I dunno!"
Many times the temperature going well below 0 – 10 or more below. We always had to keep the water running in the house and barn so the pipes did not freeze. I still have to do that!
Again when I was in high school, one winter the ice was thick enough to skate on by a little bit before Thanksgiving, and we were able to skate right up until sometime in March. And when I lived in Utica while going to college, it snowed every day from Thanksgiving to Easter, not a lot some days, but every single day there was at least a little fluffy of snow.
One year we had so much snow that my father could not get the tractor and manure spreader into the fields, so he just kept spreading it on my mother’s garden – boy did we have some vegetables that summer!
Having a couple of feet of snow on the ground used to be the norm, and we thought nothing of it. I have a photo of Sara as a toddler, in a bright print jacket, climbing over a huge snowbank in front of the trailer we lived in then, over in back of my folk’s house on our old farm.
Our farm was on top of a big hill, with more hills behind the house and barns, so we had plenty of places to go sledding. We could use the road, and with the packed snow on it you could really fly – there was a longer hill and a little flat space and a shorter hill and the goal was to be going fast enough to get down them both. It was a longer walk back up but what a ride! At night it was so neat – there was very little traffic and the neighbors would know that we might be sledding so we’d be watching out for each other. Once there was a crust on the snow, and I went sliding on top of it in the neighbor’s field on the other side of the road. Sliding until the runners broke through the crust, and the sled stopped but I didn’t and my face hit that crust – ye-ouch!
I’m sure I’ll remember more as soon as I post this, but that’s a few. Does this count for the ‘memory a day’ that I started last year and of course fell short of. Let’s call it that.

Random thoughts from a drive across the country:

* No matter how warm the sun is coming in the windows on the right side of the car, when it is minus 1 degree your breath will still frost over the window on the left side. PS, making it impossible to see the rear view mirror on that side, so you have to hold your hand on the cold frost to melt it, and then put that hand under your leg to warm it back up.
* There is no place to pee in Hardin, Montana after midnight unless you want to go in to a casino. And when the rest area is closed for winter or repair or whatever, that means no place until Billings, which is 54 miles away.
* There are more casinos per square mile, I think, in Montana than in Nevada. Don’t know what the difference is, nor why Nevada gets all the talk about them and Montana doesn’t. They are just small ones, though, not the huge hotels with all the extra stuff.
* The Exxon station in Kaycee may be all lit up at night, but it won’t give you gas, even when you use your credit card in every direction and kick the pumps besides. The Sinclair station on the other side of the interstate will give you gas, but has what is possibly the world’s worst pre-made pizza.
* If you want to buy a bridge, there’s one for sale alongside the interstate somewhere in the middle of Montana.
* In Montana they call the cars that skid and go off the road ‘spin-offs’. There were very few spin-offs in Montana, despite a couple hundred miles of icy roads. In Iowa and Nebraska, there were spin-offs every few hundred yards. I don’t know what the difference is, but on both the way out and back, the carnage was incredible. Do they drive differently in Montana?
* All the left over hippies who did not go to Eugene, Oregon went to Missoula, Montana.
* There are an awful lot of drivers who do not think ahead, and a lot of the time don’t know what they are doing on the road.
* Even though you have a legal right to do so, if you are driving 10 to 20 miles under the speed limit, you really should pull over to let traffic behind you past.
* Everyone should drive across our country at least once, to see the grandeur of it, and to have an appreciation of what the pioneers went through. Just think about walking that distance, through heat, rain, snow, cold, losing friends and family to the perils of the trip, not knowing what you will encounter next, not knowing what is waiting at the end of your trip – and then think twice before you complain about a little traffic tie-up, or because the towel in the motel is too small.
* Come to think of it, where did they pee?
* Our National Parks (and forests, heritage sites and so on) are truly a Great Idea and we should thank those who established them for their foresight and vision. Visit as many as you can, and support their efforts.
* A store that will take your word that the left boot of the pair you bought a week ago in one of their other outlets has a defective zipper that won’t stay up, and just gives you another pair even though you’ve been wearing the first pair, is a good place to shop. Cabela’s.
* New snow on a sunny day, sunset over the mountains, sunrise through clouds, rock formations, trees and a creek – there are some things it is hard to not take a pretty picture of.
* Finding a nice motel is a bonus.
* There are a lot of places that are too built-up.
* There are also a lot of places where there are miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles.
* No matter how good a trip is, it’s nice to be home, and so nice to pee in your own bathroom.