Don’t let those warm days fool you. Winter still has a few tricks up her sleeve. I went to bed uncharacteristically early Monday night because I didn’t want to start a fire to take the chill off the basement where I work. I woke up around 3 in the morning craving a snack and saw that it was spitting snow. When I went to bed around 4, it was coming down pretty hard and blowing across the street.
This was the view outside my car windshield this morning. (Florida Friends, you can click on the photos to make them larger. They will NOT radiate cold through your computer monitor, so it’s OK.)
A look to my left
My jacket and stocking cap were in the back seat, though, so I punched the button that should have opened the sliding side door. No luck. I guess enough ice had formed to make the door think there was some kind of obstruction and it wouldn’t play nicely until the van warmed up a bit.
I let the motor run for a few minutes to let it and my heated seat chase the cold away. My side windows were fairly clean.
And, a look to the right
The yellow 1977 Datsun pickup truck is still in the driveway. We sold it to a young couple who are going to fix it and drive it around Cape, but they are busy closing on a new house. I told them they could leave it here until they had a driveway of their own to park it in.
It’s funny how many people use that as a landmark when giving directions.
I see the forecast for Wednesday night calls for a 22% chance of snow. I hope it gets cold enough to freeze the ground. I need to order another load of firewood.
My Odyssey van took a dusting of snow on Tuesday afternoon in stride, even making me switch the heated seat setting from High to Low and turn down the heater.
Predictions had been all over the place for the days leading up to the “snow event,” as the TV folks like to dub it. At first, we were going to get a mix of sleet and freezing rain; then they thought snow would be 1-2 inches, then 2-4, then 4-6, and once it went all the way up to 10-12, before dialing back to 6-8 or thereabouts. In reality, I doubt if we got more than two inches.
“Asking for a friend”
Since I’d been gone a bit, the cupboards were mostly bare. (Question: if you’ve had milk in the fridge for, say, six or eight weeks, and it has lumpy stuff floating on the top of it, is it safe to call it cottage cheese and eat it if you pour on enough sugar? As Bill Hopkins would say, “Asking for a friend.”) Even I know that if something in a plastic zipper bag has something green growing in it like these plants at the old Plaza Galleria, it is best to carry it outside immediately.
I wasn’t looking forward to braving the lines in the stores to stock up, but it wasn’t too crazy. I DID note a lot of bread, milk, chips and toilet paper in the baskets fore and aft. I didn’t see much beer or booze, however. I guess Cape folks keep plenty of that on hand just in case someone slips Prohibition back into the lawbooks without anybody noticing.
“I give up! Take me home”
What did I see the next morning? My poor van was holding up its little arms like a dying cockroach and begging to leave the land of Wind Chill to go back to a place where they talk about the Heat Index in January.
Actually, the idea of lifting my wipers was something Kid Matt passed on: “The lifting the wipers thing seems a new trend based on this article from Cleveland. Everyone in Oregon and Washington seemed to be doing it…”
I’m not sure I’d do that in a parking lot where it might tempt vandals, but I was cool doing it in my driveway. I didn’t go anywhere today, so I didn’t test how well it worked. We’re supposed to get some indeterminate amount of snow Thursday and Friday, so I’ll get another shot at it.
It BETTER snow this winter. I bought 50 pounds of ice melt. The way the woodpile is going down, I may be trading it for firewood soon.
Newspapers are big on year in review stories because they can be written well in advance as space fillers for the slow holiday weeks. Why should I be any different (except for the part about doing it well in advance)?
I have to admit I’ve slacked off this year. After almost three years of posting seven days a week except for when there was a technical glitch, I took some big chunks of time off when I was caring for my mother before she died this spring. Once I found that the world wouldn’t end if I skipped a day or three, I started doing it more often when I was busy.
The most popular post last year was a piece I originally posted in 2011 about the burning and sinking of the steamboat Stonewall near Neely’s Landing. Two or three hundred people burned or drowned in the disaster. Sixty or 70 bodies were buried in a mass grave that I have searched for unsuccessfully.
I followed up the original post with a few others:
You readers were extraordinarily kind when I wrote about Mother’s death in June. An account of the family’s rather unconventional graveside ceremony was the second-most read story for the year. My family and I appreciate the many notes you all left.
Mother seldom said, “Goodbye.” She preferred “See you later,” and Brother David scratched that phrase on her casket before it was lowered in the ground.
Kermit “Moose” Meystedt
Our lives are marked by special dates and ceremonies. When we are kids, we attend birthday parties of our classmates. As we get older, we’re go to proms, ballgames and dances. Not long after that, it’s weddings, followed by baby showers. We have a bit of a gap before we start attending the funerals of the parents of friends. Finally, when we are at the stage where we have more yesterdays than tomorrows, it’s our turn to show up in the obituary pages.
Curator Jessica and I toured the Kent State May 4 Vistors Center on one of my Ohio rambles. We were fortunate enough to meet Dean Kahler, one of the students shot by the National Guard that day in 1970. He is one of the most remarkable men I’ve met, and I don’t say that about a lot of people. His story was in fourth place.
His description of that day is haunting. Click on the video if you don’t follow a single other link.
“I knew I had been shot because it felt like a bee sting. I knew immediately because my legs got real tight, then they relaxed just like in zoology class when you pith a frog,” he said. He never walked again, but he has turned into a highly competitive wheelchair athlete.
After the shooting stopped, he called out to see if there were any Boy Scouts around who could turn him over. “The only thought that came into my head was if I was turned over, would I bleed more internally than externally? I thought (shrugs shoulders) there’s a 50 / 50 chance that you’re going to die one way or the other. I knew I might die. I had a really good chance of dying, so I wanted to see the sky, the sun, leaves, peoples faces. I didn’t want to be eating grass when I died.”
Tower Rock Quarry Exposed
I started posting old story links to a Facebook page for folks who are interested in the Mississippi River. That’s probably why this 2011 story about Tower Rock and how the low water had exposed an old stone quarry south of the Rock was pushed to fifth place.
Mary Welch Steinhoff 1921- 2015
I wrote so many stories about Mother (some of them were even true) that complete strangers would come up to her in the grocery store and ask if she was “Ken’s Mother?” She pretended not to like that, but I know she enjoyed the attention. When I wrote her obituary on June 23, 2015, I came up with a list of more than three dozen links before I quit searching. I guess that’s why she became the mother everybody had (or wished they had had).
You can’t know how comforting it was to read the comments you left about a woman many of you knew only through my late-night ramblings. She had a great run. October will forever be Birthday Season.
The picture is a card sent to Mother at the Lutheran Home from someone who had never met her in person. I think it captures her spirit.
The Old Burnt Mill
Sometimes you run across a reference to a place and you just have to go searching for it. That’s how I ended up at the Old Burnt Mill in Perry county.
It’s an interesting building with a fascinating history of hubris, double-dealing, maybe a murder and a haunting.
This picture drives me crazy
This copyrighted photo of girls wearing “ugly” gym suits has been stolen by I can’t count how many websites. It’s been shared hundreds of thousands of times, even though I’ve been quick to file DCMA takedown notices every time I find it posted.
The crazy thing is that hundreds swear that the photo was taken at their high school and even contains their sisters. Trust me, I took the photo and have the original 4×5 negative in a file box. It was taken at Central High School. And, if Rosanne Hecht or Joni Tickel aren’t your sisters, then you’re wrong.
For the record, I love it when people share links to my posts, but I get really cranky if you copy and publish a photo without permission.
It was only number eight on the hit parade, but it would be a lot higher if the folks who ripped it off had posted links.
CHS 2015 class reunion
It’s not fair that Terry Hopkins can still fit in his letter jacket without sucking in his stomach so much that his eyes bug out. There was a big difference between the last get-together and the 2015 Central High School reunion. We’ve all gotten a lot grayer and a lot less spry. (Except for Terry, of course, who was probably the reason that the post scored the number nine spot.)
A celebration of Wimpy’s
The Centenary United Methodist Church held a one-day only Wimpy’s Day, featuring the original Wimpy’s family cooking to the original recipes.
Some of you have been wondering where I’ve been. I was busy in Cape getting a boat ready to pull down to Florida for Kid Adam, then it was a long slog south because of weather. When you’ve been gone from home for months, there are a number of things you have to catch up on. If you don’t accept all those excuses, I’ll have to fall back on “the dog ate my homework” and hope you don’t know that I don’t own a dog. (I’m owned by a cat, but they rarely eat homework.)
OK, to bring us back to the headline, I was in Chicago for phone switch training when the Flood of 1993 was going on. I told the boss that I’d pay any difference in ticket price to do a stopover in Missouri for a couple of days, so I could see the high water.
Dad’s construction company owned a piece of ground at the southeast corner of Highways 25 and 74 in Dutchtown. It had gone under in 1973, and was revisited by water backing up from the Mississippi River in 1993. Brother Mark and I rented a canoe to explore the property at the height of the flood. The building we’re headed toward was what we called the mechanics shed.
Big enough to hold heavy equipment
The building had a super-thick slab strong enough to hold bulldozers and draglines when they needed repair and maintenance. Half of it was set aside for mechanical and welding work, and the other side had storage cabinets and a carpentry setup.
The first challenge was how to open the door. The Master lock was located just beyond where you could reach it comfortably without tipping the canoe over. My key ring, 22 years later, is still bent from trying to twist the lock open.
Not a pretty sight
Mark’s first peek showed stuff bobbing around all over the place. We lost some good table and band saws because we never thought the water would come up so high and so fast.
How do we get through the door?
The next challenge was how to get a wide canoe through a narrow door. It was part of family lore that Dad once built a boat in a basement on Themis street, then figured out it was too big to get out. I never knew for sure if that was true, and he’s not around to either confirm or deny the story.
I REALLY didn’t want to go swimming, and I REALLY, REALLY didn’t want to spill all my camera gear in the drink, but how can you pass up an opportunity like this?
I went first
I managed get the bow of the canoe far enough into the building to rig a 2×8 or 2×10 board between the top of a cabinet and some shelving, and clambered out. Mark handed up everything that was in the boat and followed my lead.
Once the boat was empty, he was able to twist it enough to get it through the door.
Mark doesn’t look comfortable
He’s giving me the look that says, “I bet you’ve rigged that board to dump me. I can’t figure out HOW you did it, but I’m pretty sure something nasty is going to happen.”
Snakes?
He looked even more uncomfortable when I started sharing snake stories from other floods and hurricanes I had covered. “Don’t forget,” I warned him, “snakes are looking for high ground, and they might mistake you for high ground.”
Compressor was flood casualty
There was a huge, industrial-size air compressor on the mechanic side of the shed that wasn’t bolted to the floor. When the water came up, the air tank on the bottom started to float, but the heavy motor and compressor on the top caused the unit to flip over. Had it been bolted down, the water wouldn’t have gotten up high enough to do any damage. Mark’s using the big ceiling hoist to get it out of the water.
We asked someone if they thought the compressor was salvageable, but we were told that the motor was probably shot. We gave it no thought for about ten years until Brother-in-Law John came down to help us with something. He said he’d take the thing off our hands.
Sure enough, when I went over to his shop a couple of weeks ago, the compressor was puttering away as good as new. I’m glad it found a good home.
On the same side as the compressor was our ski boat, The Mary Lou, floating, still attached to its trailer. (You’ll hear more about The Mary Lou later.)
Water marks
When I got back to Cape several months later, the armpit-high water marks on the buildings were still evident. Mark may be my “little brother,” but he’s not that little.
I saw drone aerial photos of the property shot a couple of days ago. The water is already into the buildings, and I suspect that Mark and I could take a canoe through the big shed pretty much the same at 1993 if the water crests as high as predicted.
Don’t let those warm days fool you. Winter still has a few tricks up her sleeve. I went to bed uncharacteristically early Monday night because I didn’t want to start a fire to take the chill off the basement where I work. I woke up around 3 in the morning craving a snack and saw that it was spitting snow. When I went to bed around 4, it was coming down pretty hard and blowing across the street.
My jacket and stocking cap were in the back seat, though, so I punched the button that should have opened the sliding side door. No luck. I guess enough ice had formed to make the door think there was some kind of obstruction and it wouldn’t play nicely until the van warmed up a bit.
The yellow 1977 Datsun pickup truck is still in the driveway. We sold it to a young couple who are going to fix it and drive it around Cape, but they are busy closing on a new house. I told them they could leave it here until they had a driveway of their own to park it in.
