The Endless Winter

We had a fabulous autumn weather-wise, nothing to complain about. Although, that didn’t prevent many of us from doing so. First it was too warm and too dry; then, when it started to rain, it was too cold and too wet. There’s no pleasing some people.

In our neck of the woods, every snow-free day in November is a bonus. We were in the fourth week of the month before we saw our first flakes and they only amounted to an annoying dusting. This was a generous bonus indeed.

If you live in my area long enough, you’re going to experience a winter that comes early and stays late. So late that you begin to think that we’ve entered a new Ice Age.

We were afflicted by just such a winter the year that I was eighteen and bulletproof.

I had taken a job working for a dairyman who lived about twenty miles from Sioux Falls. My job description included doing anything and everything on his dairy farm, from feeding calves to milking cows to scooping poop. I was essentially taking the place of the owner’s son, who had abruptly left the farm with his new bride following a domestic dispute with his paterfamilias.

Their 72-cow dairy barn was spanking new. For me, it was like stepping into a cushy new Cadillac when compared to the old and primitive dairy facilities we had at home.

A fierce blizzard blew in on Nov. 9. The storm swept across the Great Lakes the next day, sinking the ore freighter Edmund Fitzgerald. Gordon Lightfoot later recorded a funeral dirge about the loss of the ship and its crew.

The boss — he went by Bud — had hired a builder from southern climes to construct his dairy barn. The morning after our first blizzard, we discovered a major design flaw in the barn’s ventilation system. Specifically, it let snow blow in through the eves, filling the entire north row of free stalls with white stuff.

I was young and bulletproof, so I had no problem with shoveling several metric tons of snow from the free stalls. But the frosty surprises didn’t end there.

We were milking the next day when a ceiling panel came crashing down along with a large quantity of snow. The same ventilation mistake made in the free stall portion of the barn had filled the milking parlor’s attic with snow.

I was bulletproof and easily able to crawl through the attic and push snow through the opening in the ceiling. I nailed plywood over the offending eaves, stopping any further snow incursions. But the problems didn’t end there.

The builder had placed the milk room’s water pipes inside the walls where — surprise! — they froze solid when the mercury plummeted below zero. We had no choice but to replumb the entire milk room, putting the pipes on the warm side of the wall. I was young and eager to learn how to solder copper pipes, so I saw this as a win.

Blizzards arrived on a regular basis that year, making it seem as though winter would never end. The snow got so deep on the south side of the new barn that Bud’s 3-year-old granddaughter and I were able to go sledding off the barn’s roof.

One day, in the aftermath of yet another blizzard, the milk truck got mired in a snowdrift about a quarter of a mile from the farm. I could see the driver shoveling furiously as he struggled to free the truck, so I picked up a scoop and walked out to help. The windchill was deeply below zero, but I was young and bulletproof.

It took a great deal of shoveling, but we finally freed the truck, saving Bud from the distress of dumping milk. I wore ill-fitting wire rimmed glasses at the time and later examination revealed a white stripe of frostbite where the metal nosepiece had rested on exposed skin. Maybe I wasn’t so bulletproof after all.

One day I was hauling a heavy bucket of silage with the skid loader when one of its wheels suddenly parted company. For some reason, all of the wheel’s studs had sheared off.

I was soon holding a long punch against the busted studs as Bud angrily whacked the punch with a humungous sledgehammer. This made me nervous; I may have been bulletproof, but my hands weren’t sledgehammer-proof.

On overcast nights the lights of Sioux Falls caused the low clouds to glow like neon. It made me wonder if something better was over the horizon.

There was. I quit that job and soon thereafter the winter that seemed as though it would never end finally did.

Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy” can be found at www.workman.com and in bookstores nationwide.