On the way home that night was a looming bank of clouds in the West, foreshadowing a change that was quite literally on the horizon. I checked my phone, if we were lucky part of tomorrow would still be bearable, but after that, well we’d know more in a couple of days. One thing was for certain, a lot of work lay between then and now.

I wish I could share in my boy’s unbridled excitement at the prospect of a snow day, but I don’t. Not because I don’t appreciate the beauty of a winter landscape, but because of the amount of work that comes with plummeting temperatures and accumulating snow.

I understand it was my decision to be involved with animal livestock, and I am certainly not fishing for a pity party. Nor do I expect a ribbon for doing my job under extreme circumstances, lots of people do. Over the course of time, I have figured out there are two sides to every story, and this is the other side of the winter wonderland.

The recent cold weather reminded me of a long day I had about a year ago, one of the longer days in my recent memory. If you recall, between Thanksgiving and Christmas last year we had a winter storm blow through that brought a fair amount of snow, and dangerously cold temperatures. This is a recounting of the day the storm arrived.

Everyone knew it was coming, the weather forecasters had been talking about it for several days. As we were leaving work from the feed store the night before, we had put together a plan to try and cover the most urgent customers. Every customer is important, but importance and urgency are two different things.

It appeared very likely the weather would have us out of commission for several days. We had to cover anyone who needed feed delivered in the next three days.

The plan was simple, Cody was going to stay closer to home with his truck and get a bunch of work done in the area, and I was going to take the old cube truck North to hit several customers taking larger quantities. This would be the last time the plan went as planned for me.

The next morning, I fired up the cube truck that had been stowed at our house. It was an old L9000 Ford, probably purchased from Pioneer Village, it had a 3406 Cat engine, and enough miles on it to have gone to the moon and back (probably twice). The old truck had been plugged in, filled with winter fuel, and treated with enough fuel treatment to operate in the Arctic. There was no reason this shouldn’t be a cold, but productive trip.

About halfway to town, there came that sluggish feeling. You know the one, the one you perceive to be happening before you can even prove it is happening, but you know something isn’t right. Yes, well something wasn’t right. All my amateur training had taught me that the middle of the road was a bad place to have a dead truck. I quickly took inventory of what I had at my disposal, and it wasn’t much. Luckily there was a place with a big driveway and a big yard coming up quickly, and it belonged to a friendly. That seemed like a good place to crash land a truck that was coming in with none of its own power. I pushed in the clutch and coasted into the yard and stopped. A short walk to the shop revealed several inquisitive guys asking what I needed for help, I explained the situation and bummed a pickup to run to town. The local parts store had the filters I needed so I bought three sets, and some insulation to wrap the filters with.

It was a bit troubling to me the truck had gelled up; after all, it was filled with winter blended fuel and also treated above and beyond with fuel treatment by none other than yours truly. However, I didn’t recall the last time the fuel filters had been changed, probably just some water in the filters I guessed. I returned to the borrowed parking spot, changed the questionable filters, cranked the truck up, and left. Once at the store, I put my load on the truck and took off with no further problems, just a small delay and now we were back on track.

The first stop was a ranch up Highway 97 north and west of North Platte. The drop was noneventful, and

cont. PAGE 8 - Snow Day the rancher man was very grateful we got to them before the storm. My next stop was halfway between Mullen and Thedford, I decided to take 97 on up to Highway 2. Somewhere around Tryon, what was left of a decent day went to pieces. The wind began to blow from the north and the snow was coming down by the bushel, it was really starting to feel like a poor life decision.

Do you remember the old TV sets? When you tuned them to a channel that wasn’t coming in, and all you saw was black and white fuzz? Now imagine if you will, driving a lumbering old truck, loaded with feed, and your face about six inches from this television set. Yeah, it was a real hoot.

The county road that went to the second drop is a bit of a challenge on a good day. Lots of hills to traverse, and it is paved one lane wide for a stretch to keep the sand it's on from blowing away. They had accumulated more snow up there than we had, and the good ol’ Nebraska wind had started stacking it in drifts, adding to the thrill of the day. The old truck had gotten me to my second stop, and as I pulled up to the feeder, I was just grateful to have made it.

I pushed in the clutch and engaged the hydraulic pump. Nothing. Tried again, nothing. With the switch engaged, I left the cab and went on a mission to see why the pumper wasn’t pumping. Now I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but it was pretty apparent what the problem was. One of the drifts I had to yeehaw through on the way in was hard, like really hard. And the snow had seized the opportunity to karate chop the airline that shifts the hydraulic pump into gear. I grabbed some tools I carry and laid down in the snow to work on the truck.

Using MacGyver-like skills I was able to remove the brass compression fitting from the split airline, cut the line, weasel the fitting back on, and retighten the nut to the fitting. It leaked, but it held enough pressure to keep the pump engaged and pumping, whew. Surprisingly the third stop went just fine, and now I was ready to head for home. It was around 4:30, and Thedford is an hour and a half from home in good weather, but it was not good weather. The wind had whipped up to biblical proportions, the snow was still making visibility seem like a made-up word, and now the sun was setting. It would be dark and getting even colder very soon.

As I headed south out of Thedford I was hoping to make up time with the wind at my back, maybe I’d have better visibility traveling the same direction as the snow. But I would be wrong. I could see at a rate of about 45 miles per hour, much faster and it was more driving by feel than by sight, so 45 it was. I reached and crossed the Dismal River, and as the truck was climbing out of the valley, there was the perceived sluggish feeling. Oh no, please not here, please just keep running I kept thinking over and over. It was not to be, it was happening right here. In the dark and the cold, with no cell service, and about 10 miles from help.

I went to work with the extra filters and Howes I had bought. On the side of the road, I changed filters, said a prayer, and hit the switch. The old truck cranked, rumbled, and banged, and roared back to life. Victory. I would not freeze to death here, I might a couple miles down the road, but not right here. Stapleton was the first town that came into view, then Arnold, and then Gothenburg. As I passed each town, I breathed a little easier. By the time I got into Gothenburg, I thought if this thing dies now I’ll just leave it on the side of the street and walk to the store.

What a welcome sight the lights of the feed store were. My pickup, scratch that, my chariot, waited to take me to my wood-fired castle. I was a warrior, I had fought the weather and returned victorious. My day, my struggle, was over. I was done. I was also wrong.

On the way home, as I was fighting for the last time to see the path laid before me, my wife called. There was something in her voice that was not terribly reassuring. Now in the dark, in the blinding cold and snow, a power pole had given up the fight and fallen into the cornstalk field where our cows were passing the time.

(We found out later the pole had some help from a non-local truck driver who turned way to sharp where he didn’t belong, and snapped it off, but didn’t bother to report it to anyone.) Luckily, my youngest stockman was concerned about how the cattle were handling the cold. He talked his mom into driving him by the cows on the way home “just to check on them.” I am very thankful for his curiosity, concern for livestock, sixth sense, or whatever it was, because had they not taken that route home the situation could have gotten much worse.

It probably goes without saying, that the pole tore down a half mile of fence with it, and now the blizzard I had fought all day was pushing the cows right toward a down fence and down powerlines. For the sake of time and space, I’ll just tell you that the lines were dead, and the cows were not. Dawson came out and made sure of that for us, but they said it would be later in the week before they could get power restored in that spot. No big deal, we got the cows in and fixed the fence.

But it was a big deal, at least to one absent neighbor.

You see, they had a place that was not winterized at the end of that line and wouldn’t be back anytime soon. In the dark, my wife and I winterized their place with RV antifreeze borrowed from another neighbor.

And as they say in the story books, they all lived happily ever after. Except after all those miles, fighting all that weather, and making it within a half mile from home, I finally lost the road in the snow and ran my pickup off in the ditch and had to wait for Erin to come back and pull me out.

Like I said, it’s not that I don’t appreciate winter, it just makes everything else so much more work.

Not just for farmers and ranchers, but for all sorts of people that have jobs to do regardless of the weather, people that we all count on. Many of these people work their regular jobs and then go home to tend animals, push snow, or any number of other second jobs.

I raise a steaming cup of coffee to you. And until next time to quote Red Green, “keep your stick on the ice.”