Comment on When I drive around I see a different world than you do. by saarnok

Parent Post: When I drive around I see a different world than you do. · In Reply To

saarnok · 10/28/2025, 2:09:58 AM · permalink

Don't know if they matter.  
  
Most of us can't relate to a world where there wasn't hot and cold running water 24/7, let alone a world where we got up long before sunrise to milk the cows after digging out the snow to let them into the barn.  
  
God, I miss it. The simplicity of just doing what needs to be done.  
  
The snow isolated us for... a month it seems like. Probably no more than a week or two.  
  
But, the power never failed and even if it had we heated with coal and wood. We would have cooked on that if we needed to.  
  
I was the only one left to take care of everything. Everyone else was "out there" having their own grand adventure, bringing two hundred tons of heavy equipment back home while I tried my best to keep the farm alive.  
  
I worked 12 hours before "breakfast", my sister feeding me half a loaf of bread as french toast and a dozen links of sausage with heavy maple syrup so I could go out and start all over again to fall asleep and rise to venture into the storm again.  
  
I drank quarts of hot cocoa between "shifts". No mail. No phone. No TV. The radio gave us some irrelevant "news" we never even listened to and I sang any of the thousand songs I'd learned while milking cows.  
  
Now and then I'd just lay down in a snowdrift while the storm raged.  
  
Nothing could touch me. I was completely alone.  
  
They'd have discovered my body after the storm was passed. But, I needed to get back to the house.  
  
How little a thing it is to be the "hero". The only one who will brave the elements someone else says are "too much".  
  
The wind never stopped. Not for more than a week, maybe two or more. The old shop was buried in drifting snow until cows were venturing onto it's roof.  
  
Dad made it home on the first day after the storm broke. He had to borrow a Cat to dig his way in and found me relaxing in the middle of the day for the first time since he'd left to retrieve the equipment from out of state.  
  
He blew up at me, "lazing around" while everything was going to hell.  
  
Didn't care. I knew I'd done good.  
  
A year later he apologized to me. The first, the last time in my life. The next year had been much like the one I'd coped with alone. He'd had himself and three capable hands and wasn't sure he'd even done as well.  
  
I'd trade... so much to recapture that simple life. That simple purpose. I might trade all my life to come for just an hour of what I experienced back then.

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