It’s ugly out there. 4 degrees and wind driving around last night’s fresh snow and making it look like clouds of smoke blowing by. I was sitting here staring out the window and in the fading light it reminded me of a rather intersting incident when I was 10. It seems like a thousand years ago, things are so different now.
In the middle of the terrible late 1970s recession and hyperinflation, we had moved out to Cyrus, a tiny town 7 miles east of Morris. Out in the wide open prarie.
Because morgage rates were 19%, my parents could not afford to buy a house. Which was probably just as well, as in a town of 329 people, no houses were for sale. As an enticement to get my father to take the job, the school district offered to renthim the original township 1-room schoolhouse for $20 a month.
Well, as they say, you get what you pay for. The 1895 school house had no insulation, single-pane windows, and a boiler that was probably undersized when it was installed in 1920. To fight the ever-present wind in Cyrus, we wrapped the house in plastic sometime in early November, which helped only somewhat.
A pounding on the front door woke me up before dawn on a Sunday morning in January and I knew that something was terribly wrong. I could hear the plastic roaring and flapping in the wind and instantly I was awake because no one could be out in that weather pounding on our door unless something bad had happened.
I heard my dad running down the hall and opening the door, and the -15 degree cold and screaming wind blem our next door neighbor and Reverend of the town’s Lutheran church inside.
“My God, what is it, John?” dad asked.
“Sharon. It’s Sharon,” the Reverend said. Referring to his wife. Who happened to be pregnant and 4 days from due.
“Oh no. It’s time, isn’t it?”
“Mike, we’re in trouble here. It came on much faster than with the other kids…”
“Ambluance?”
“They said they can send one, but it would have to come from the hospital in Morris, and then take us all the way back there. In this weather… it’ll be too late.”
I stood there in the silence with the cold maple floorboards burning my feet. Dad and the Reverend stared at each other and the wind tore at the plastic on the side of the schoolhouse.
“Go and get her ready. We need to go.”
Without another word, dad pulled on his heavy wool pants, his hunting parka, and his Sorels. He put on a hat, and grabbed his choppers off the shelf. My mother (a nurse) brushed past me, and said she was going over to make sure Sharon could make it. 8 miles is a long way in a near-whiteout and it was a lot farther in 1980.
Out the window, I could see dad putting chains on all 4 wheels of his rusty mud brown F100 Ford Ranger. Which as a favor from God, started on the second try, and it was 4 wheel dirve. A rarity back then.
He drove next door and I watched them carefully load Sharon and John in the Ford. They drove back up the street and as mom walked up the front steps with the Reverend’s other 2 children in tow, I heard dad yell to her.
“One hour! Not second more. If I don’t call the house in one hour, call the police and tell Gary to get in the big tractor and come looking for us.”
The truck rolled down the street and disappeared into the whiteout. I bit my lip and the tailghts were the last thhing I saw. I looked up at the Westclock clock on the wall. I still remember the time. 3.25 A.M. One hour.
Mom called a friend of hers who lived right along the highway, halfway to Morris. She asked Eileen to watch for the headlights and call her if they passed.
Every gust seemed worse than the last gust and it seemed to get darker instead of lighter as the seconds ticked by. After what seemed like 2 days of waiting, 3:55 ticked by and the phone exploded! It was Eileen. Highights had just passed going slowly westbound. It had to be them, but clearly the going was slow, 3.5 miles in 30 minutes.
20 more minutes and my mom could wait no longer. She called the Hospital in Morris. They had not arrived.
Every second was an hour. Just before 20 past, the sound of the phone knocked all of us off our the kitchen chairs.
They made it. And not with too much time to spare. The Reverend’s second son was born within the hour.
Years later dad confided to me that he thought their goose was cooked. It was worse than even he imagined. Several times they had to back up and make run after run to break through drifts. But every time he thought they were done for, they broke though. He said that in those conditions, if that wasn’t proof you can ask and God will provide, he doesn’t what would convince you.
It seems like a whole different world back then. No cell phones, no GPS, only neighbors, friends, and that yellow phone on the wall in the kitchen.
Whenever I think of this, I’m proud of dad. Everybody seemed always to look to him when they didn’t know what to do. And he always did it.
Grouse
