HILLSPEAKING
from The Anglican Digest 

PENTECOST A.D. 2003

THIRTY winters' experience should make one a fairly accurate prognosticator of weather, but the truth of the matter is I am no more able to forecast Ozark weather than Phil is to foretell what the weather will be in Pennsylvania nor our friendly TV weatherman across the line in Missouri.
    If I awake to a blanket of white over Grindstone Mountain, I know it has been snowing; if the tree branches droop to the ground draped with diamond crystals, I know we have had an ice storm; if I can't see the Old Residence from the Farm House, I know we have fog.
    As the Ogre of the Ozarks was wont to say: It's as simple as that.
    Each and every one of those thirty winters has been different.  Each has had its own mix of cold and warmth, dryness and wetness, snow and ice.  In the aggregate they tend to blend together in a mosaic that has no unifying theme other than the calendar.  However, some winter experiences stand out in my memory although I cannot put specific years to the remembrances. 
    Winter in the Ozarks can be as brief as the Twelve Days of Christmas or it can extend from Hallowe'en to Easter Day. Patient Wife and I have fond memories of Trick-or-Treaters dusted with snow and of watching our grandchildren dressed in parkas hunting Easter Eggs.
    One March in the mid-80s we experienced a late, wet, heavy snow with a significant accumulation.  Patient Wife was visiting a sister in Alabama; Father Foland and his housekeeper, Lillian Burns, were living in the Farm House; Vinnie Brown was living in the little cottage; Bill Cowger was in the shotgun apartment in the Calf Barn; Charles Robbins, our maintenance supervisor, was in the lower part of the Calf Barn; Helen Rohm, a widow, was living in the Brown House; and Jack and Ruby Baker lived at the end of the string of houses.
    There you have the cast and the set.  The plot is simple: Heavy, wet snow took the power lines down.  No electricity meant no lights, no heat, no water, no refrigeration, no cooking facilities except the apartment size gas range in the Old Residence where I then lived.
    The plot thickens: The weather turned warm, but not warm enough to melt the snow.  All of us had food in our refrigerators and freezers but I was the only one with a working (gas) cook stove.
    Charles gathered up the food (we stored it in snow banks).  I cooked it, and Charles delivered it.  He made the rounds every morning with a thermos of hot coffee to start the day and then delivered each successive meal as I prepared it.
    What do I remember most about that winter?  My first hot shower in over a week!  A winter to remember.