The ice storm in the Northeast reminds me of events that happened to us over 20 years ago.
It was 1987 – the winter of rubber ice. I was back home for Christmas break from collage and we got hit with a minor 6 inches of snow garnished with 3/8 inch of ice and temps that stayed between 20 and 0 for the two weeks I was off from school.
This Ice was rather flexible and slicker than goose poop. To make matters worse, this flexibility of the ice meant that no matter how you parked a vehicle the tires were always in four low spots.
At the time we had about 600 head of momma cows scattered over 20 miles and 14 pastures. Feeding hay in these conditions was quite challenging. The temps were not helping any either. Ice on the ponds was 12 inches thick and had to be chopped through so the cows could drink.
The cold temps also created an unforeseen driving hazard - frozen cow turds. On this kind of ice the name of the game was keep moving until you found a good place to stop, drop the hay, cut the ice and get going again. By the third or fourth day of this even the frozen turds were scattered all over like random parking curbs.
We found ourselves doing these chores in packs of at least 3 feed trucks each and sometimes with an extra truck acting as an outrider if things got real bad. Communication was done via the old CB on channel 2.
“Break 2, Rustybucket you copy?”
“Yea, I got ya Bent Rim”
“I’m hung up on frozen semi-digested organtic matter – come back.”
“You got to be full of BS”
“Negatory o-wise one, I’m not full of BS and neither are the bovines that unloaded all this crap here. As a matter of fact I’m stuck against a pile-o-poo that looks like a micro Mt. Rushmore. If I look close I can see a face of King Kong, Godzilla, Dracula, and Ronald Regan on it from here. “
“I’ll be there.”
It was 1987 – the winter of rubber ice. I was back home for Christmas break from collage and we got hit with a minor 6 inches of snow garnished with 3/8 inch of ice and temps that stayed between 20 and 0 for the two weeks I was off from school.
This Ice was rather flexible and slicker than goose poop. To make matters worse, this flexibility of the ice meant that no matter how you parked a vehicle the tires were always in four low spots.
At the time we had about 600 head of momma cows scattered over 20 miles and 14 pastures. Feeding hay in these conditions was quite challenging. The temps were not helping any either. Ice on the ponds was 12 inches thick and had to be chopped through so the cows could drink.
The cold temps also created an unforeseen driving hazard - frozen cow turds. On this kind of ice the name of the game was keep moving until you found a good place to stop, drop the hay, cut the ice and get going again. By the third or fourth day of this even the frozen turds were scattered all over like random parking curbs.
We found ourselves doing these chores in packs of at least 3 feed trucks each and sometimes with an extra truck acting as an outrider if things got real bad. Communication was done via the old CB on channel 2.
“Break 2, Rustybucket you copy?”
“Yea, I got ya Bent Rim”
“I’m hung up on frozen semi-digested organtic matter – come back.”
“You got to be full of BS”
“Negatory o-wise one, I’m not full of BS and neither are the bovines that unloaded all this crap here. As a matter of fact I’m stuck against a pile-o-poo that looks like a micro Mt. Rushmore. If I look close I can see a face of King Kong, Godzilla, Dracula, and Ronald Regan on it from here. “
“I’ll be there.”
