ND Winters

I was born and raised in North Dakota so I know about winter. I know about the bone-chilling cold, blocked roads, houses that never really get warm, layering on lots of clothes before heading outside, and I know all about headbolt heaters. And while it wasn't really ND winters that made me leave ND, I'm awfully glad I'm not there this winter "enjoying" the 60 inches of snow and artic temperatures they've had. I've included a photo that my mother-in-law snapped yesterday morning. And yes, that is 42 below zero. I do remember a three-day blizzard back in 1966 (does that sound like a line from an old western movie?). [Ed. note: I'd originally typed 1996 but it should be 1966 - thanks, Kim.] The weather was so bad that my Dad was unable to get to the barn...he couldn't even see the trees in our shelter belt through the blowing snow. Here's an arial photo of our farm taken over 30 years ago. As you can see, the house in which we lived was pretty much out in the open and a long way from the barn where the cattle were.

For three days the blizzard raged and Dad had no idea if the cattle were safe inside the barn or buried under the snow.

When it was all over, we discovered a ten-foot snow bank in front of the barn. Here's a picture of my sister Janis and me (in on the right) standing on the snow bank. See that little 4-paned window on the left? The bottom of that window is about ten feet from the ground. Oh, and the cattle were fine. They'd all taken shelter inside the barn. They were thirsty and hungry but they were alive. Thinking back, the one I really feel sorry for was Mom. After all, how do you keep five kids entertained during a blizzard? Remember, this was ND in the 60s; we could get 2, maybe 3 channels on our black-and-white television. Our house wasn't large; my two sisters and I shared one large bedroom upstairs and my two brothers shared the other. That was pretty much it for the upstairs. We didn't have a theater room or a great room or a game room; in my house, the living room was where we...lived. When the blizzard was over, my older brother Dennis conned me into helping him build a tree house. Granted, building a treehouse in March isn’t the norm in ND but since the snow drifts were 15-ft high in the trees, it kinda made sense. Well, we were young so it made sense to us.

We didn’t have to climb the trees to get to the right height; we simply carried the boards over, climbed up a few branches and nailed them in place. It wasn’t until the snow started to melt that I realized I’d been conned. You see, as the snow melted, the lower branches were exposed. Dennis simply sawed off those branches so I couldn’t reach them. Here’s a picture of our soon-to-be treehouse with me holding the first branch in place. I can’t imagine either of my sisters would have allowed their kids to do this when they were our age. And I’m sure my Mom wasn’t all that happy about it but remember, she’d just spent three very l-o-n-g days locked up in a house with us! She was probably just happy we weren’t inside. But one really good thing did come out of that blizzard though; I learned to knit.