During the day on Tuesday, Hubs and I commented that the blizzard wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been predicted. Tuesday evening, Hubs and I ate our words as we continually commented that we couldn’t see our barn, let alone the neighboring house, anymore.
Tuesday night, as I sat on my couch with a laptop and Hubs sat on his couch with a laptop (yeah, a typical evening), we listened to the the wind gusting so hard it sounded like it would tear down the house. All of a sudden, the dogs went crazy, and there was a knock on the door. A kid, who had to have been freezing, asked if he could borrow a shovel. Hubs gave him a shovel, and then took our vehicle down the road to assess the situation. He came back and got his skid loader. After quite some time, as I watched out the window and could barely see their headlights, Hubs finally got them pulled out of the ditch. They went driving by the house, Hubs came in the house with snow and ice covering his face, and we, thinking all was well, went on with our evening.
Except, about 20 minutes later, a vehicle pulled in our drive. That’s when Hubs said, “They’re back, they must not have been able to make it down the road. I told them to come back if they couldn’t make it.”
So, we frantically tried to straighten up the house a bit in the seven minutes it took them to get to our door. We got them some blankets, and the dad slept on one of our couches and the son slept on the other. Wednesday morning, the four of us sat together and stared out the window at the snowdrifts which were cutting off transportation. We stared long and hard as if the drifts might magically disappear and just prove to be a figment of our imagination. Alas, they did not, so that’s when the farmers went into action mode.
I watched throughout the morning and afternoon as the neighbors got together with tractors and skid loaders and discussed who was going to move snow at which part of the road. That’s the true definition of “community” and “neighbors”.
Later, an online friend of mine asked if they offered us any money, because calling a tow truck alone would have cost them. I laughed and said, “Out here, you don’t call a tow truck; you call a neighbor.”
That’s just the way it is here.
P.S. That photo was not taken after the blizzard … I haven’t brought myself to look at those photos yet.