As long as I can remember, my dad has dreaded the coming of Christmas. He was compelled to meet everybody's expectations, but he never really knew how to go about that. Most of the time, it meant that you had to go to town and buy a bunch of stuff that you ordinarily wouldn't have use for. Of course, the top of his list was my mother.
The most memorable year, he had procrastinated until the last possible minute until Christmas Eve. It had snowed overnight, a lot of snow, and then the wind blew. The four foot tall white wooden fence that bordered our lane was drifted completely full of the white stuff! The fields surrounding the house had four foot drifts spaced about every hundred feet.
We were pretty well snowed in. But Christmas was still coming! My dad studied our situation and immediately surmised that our chances of making it out the lane were zero, but we might be able to make it across the field?
We put tire chains on all four tires of our 3/4 ton ranch pickup. We locked the hubs and shifted the differential into 4L, and out we went. We got stuck in the first snow drift. We got out the shovels and dug out enough that we could back out our own tracks.
This time, we got a run at it and hit the drift going fast. As a teenager, I was loving the excitement of this part! The old v8 was roaring, wheels spinning, chains whipping up snow high in the air and all around us, bouncing up and down, and thrashing side to side and we made it! I was grinning, my dad was gritting and we hit the next drift.
Poof! Wasn't a lot of drama coming to an abrubt halt again. The old Ford just spun the wheels, but wouldn't budge. Get the shovels out again and dig more snow. My dad was starting to show how he got nicknamed "the mad Basco". His choices of magic words were not helping our situation, but we dug out backwards again.
My favorite part again! We hit that snow drift with fury, engine loud, spinning, and thrashing around! We made it a few feet farther into the snow drift.
My dad must've had faith in his magic words, repeating them as much as he did? Maybe he just needed to say them ever louder and more forceful? It wasn't working. Nothing else we could do, but dig out backwards again.
It was about mid afternoon when we'd made it about half way across the field. Our neighbors were driving by on the road and stopped to check on us. I think that got my dad's hopes up because we'd pulled them out twice before and this was an opportunity for them to return the favor. They must have thought it was pointless to try and make it out to us. After looking down at us for awhile, they left without saying anything.
We kept at it and eventually made it to the road. After getting the chains off, we made it to town about the time most of the stores were already closed.
With the grocery store being the only place open, my mother got a box of Tide for Christmas that year (and some chocolates).
No comments:
Post a Comment