Between two wars, a blizzard,
Fifteen degrees below,
Wind howling shook the house,
Drove the dirt and snow
In snarling threads across the ground,
Separated farms from town.
My mother and her sister, little girls,
Up and chilled in the kitchen
Huddled by the iron stove,
Warmed to a mix of fuel:
Coal, wood, dried cow manure
Radiating steady heat,
Water starting to steam,
Sad irons warming slow,
Breakfast down,
Ironing to be done.
Wind howling and roads blocked,
Dad out milking cows,
Chopping ice on water tanks,
Pitching down a few forkfuls hay...
Not much else to do
In the howling wind.
No co-op telephone to say
School was closed;
Not that it mattered,
No one could have made their way
Over country roads blown shut,
Over snow-blown dunes of snow.
Dad and the uncles had wired
A makeshift telephone along the fences,
Two miles to the home farm,
A haphazard affair, but still a marvel
On the eastern Montana prairie
To keep Grandpa and sister Anna close....
(Grandmother gone, and only Anna home),
A crank to send the current along the line,
The hope that someone heard the bell,
Picked up to say, "Hello?"
A modern miracle
Between two farm houses in Montana.
The bell rang,
Mother answered,
Listened and then spoke low....
"Anna's gone," she told her husband
As he stomped in, white with cold and driven snow.
"We'll try to go across the fields," he said.
But first they ate, and bundled up:
Long stockings, woolen dresses for the girls,
Blankets, coats and mittens,
Sad irons from the stove top,
Bricks warmed in the oven,
Wrapped in burlap for the floor
Of the old truck.
The journey was unsteady, slow,
Following the fence line,
A makeshift guide in the blowing snow,
Moving patch to patch of brown blown bare,
Avoiding rock hard drifts
Looking out for stones,
Seeking gates to find approaches
To the neighbor's fields.
Two hours later, the old house
Stood ghost-like in the swirling snow,
Bleak it seemed,
Windows staring dark,
Holding death within.
The quiet girls stayed in the kitchen,
Little mothers with their dolls;
The men carried sister Anna to the porch,
Laid her on the boot shelf, stiff and still,
And Momma washed her,
Dried and combed the soft brown hair,
Dressed her in her flannel gown,
Wrapped her in a linen sheet,
Ready for her ride to town,
Said her good-byes out on the porch.
They left Grandpa standing
In the glooming cold,
Chores to do, stoves to tend,
Waiting for the storm to end....
"The undertaker told my mother
He'd never seen
Such a wonderfully prepared body,"
My Mother's voice crackles
through my cell phone.
She's sitting in a soft chair
A thousand miles away;
I am parked along a road
Reliving an event 80 years past.
Towers hurl our thoughts:
The past - the present,
The looming future
Frozen in a telephonic moment.
My mother recites a memory
Eighty years' past...
Her parents long gone;
Her life nearly through;
Her son grasping every word,
Blizzard whipped in the rush
Of time.
Trying to preserve these old family memories.... As we grow older, our family stories become more important. Go ask your folks for their memories. They tell us who we are....