Healthy Appetite
The nasty winds sweeping down from the great white north accompanied b y the blowing snow has eluded us for the most part this winter. I'm not sure if they'll eventually come knockin' on our doorstep or not; I wouldn't bet
against them however.
It took a little while to get used to the increased impact and frequency when Mother Nature decides to deliver her wintry wrath when I moved here. The higher an individual lives in the longitudes, the greater the difference in what the old lady has in store; over time, it just becomes a part of the routine and, unless the Earth goes completely off its axis, it doesn’t last forever.
We were spoiled back home in Missouri. Oh sure, we had cold and snow and ice and all of that; but the gales and gusts rushing southward from the polar caps and over the northern great plains were few and far between. The blizzard of ’82 changed all that.
It hit us with a fury, relentless and unyielding. In the beginning I thought it would be just another opportunity to bundle up and jump on the tractor, hot dogging it into the local suburbs, clear some driveways and make a dollar or two. I was mistaken. The county was paralyzed and nobody was going anywhere anytime soon, and/or if they did it would be with tremendous difficulty. The old man didn't mind difficult and told me to hop in the truck.
We made our way to the restaurant in the Silverado, blown and blasted, barely able to see. His goal, if we still had power, was to crank up the ovens and open for business. Walk-in traffic and regular casual folks out for lunch or dinner would be non-existent, but he knew the other nut jobs much like he would be out burning up clutches and saving other idiots stranded. His intuition was correct and we spent the next 48 hours making pizza, drinking Schlitz and feeding frozen tow truck drivers, snow plow drivers, firemen, policemen, and white collar guys playing in their new four-wheel vehicles.
Rudy was an energetic elderly fellow who lived in the hill country out west along highway 45. He played the ‘spoons’, a unique homemade type of metallic percussion instrument held between his two fingers. On Friday nights, he sat next to my mother who played the piano and together would entertain the locals. His rhythm was very impressive, slapping them back and forth across his chest and his knee and his elbow, animated as he stomped his worn leather boot up and down.
As he entered the store that afternoon, you could tell something was wrong. Never without a smile and a spring in his step, he trudged to the bar, shoulders hunched, asking for my father and a cup of coffee. He was a delight to talk to. "Rudy, you doin' okay? You seem kinda down," I say.
"Got a couple o' cows missin'," he said. "I'm afraid they be stuck in the holler, stuck in the marsh, probly frozen solid. I gotta get 'em out." "Oh hell," I replied.
About that time, Dad came out of the kitchen and Rudy explained his dilemma. Without any prompting or hesitation, we layered up and headed out.
We made our way through the woods on a logging trail in Rudy’s half-track troop carrier, a souvenir from WWII. And sure enough, far below in a gorge, below the oaks and the maple, there they were, two Herefords, knee deep, motionless like statues.
I'd thought the chainsaw on the floor of the cab was for cutting wood. It was not.
Rudy was too old to navigate down the steep bank himself, he just looked at dad and I and said, "take 'em off at the knees and hook 'em up with the log chains, we’ll pull ‘em up to the ridge, let the coyotes have ‘em.” They tipped over and wobbled on the ice like a toy when we made the final cut through the last leg.
After it was all said and done and we started to head back, Rudy said, “thank ya boys, I 'preciate yuz helpin' me. I'll see ya Friday night." Driving out of the gate and onto the blacktop my father asked if I was okay. "Yeah, I'm good," I replied. "Oddly enough, I'm hungry for a good steak."
He looked at me and said, “You’re a strange kid, you know that?” After a few miles, he says, "T-bone or ribeye?" All I said was "medium rare."
