The Cruellest month

April 7, 1999, Grand Forks N.D.

"April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain."

--T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land"

Dear classmates and friends,

I don’t know if T.S. Eliot ever visited North Dakota in the spring, but it sure sounds like he could have. April has been a trial so far. Last week the Red River of the North began rising at an alarming rate and we had an ice storm that knocked out power to many homes and businesses and wrecked hundreds of trees. Suddenly it seemed events were unfolding just as they had in 1997 before we got hit by The Big Flood. By Thursday night my coping skills had disintegrated to the point that I went to bed at 8:30 and pulled the covers over my head.

We muddled through Friday and Saturday and Mark went out and bought an electric generator as a back up. Our sump pump goes constantly this time of the year, and if we lose power we have to hand bail the sump or our basement will flood. We’ve hand bailed once before and once was enough.

Then on Easter Sunday the sun came out – Hallelujah! -- to melt the ice and give us hope that we might escape the ordeal of another major flood, at least this year. We’re all breathing a lot easier, although we’ll be keeping a close eye on the river for at least another couple of weeks. At the same time things got incredibly busy at work and all three of us came down with yet another version of the head cold we have been fighting all winter. This morning I went to work with a Nyquil hangover and was so grouchy even I couldn’t stand myself.

Because of the weather we had to cancel our plans to spend Easter in Eureka. We may be on the cusp on the millennium, but we are still ruled by the weather just as our great-grandparents were when they came here 100 years ago. The rain falls, turns to ice and brings down trees and power lines, making useless all our modern conveniences. Last week my mother said to me, "None of this weather would have really made a difference in the 1930s," meaning that no one had any modern conveniences then, and in event of a storm, people would have just stayed home. I said, "But Mom, who wants to live like the 30s again?"

I remember plenty of snowstorms, ice storms, even summer lightening and thunderstorms that knocked out electrical power to our farm when I was growing up 12 miles north of Eureka. One such time was the famous three-day March blizzard of 1966. I was 11 then and my memories of it are hazy, but I do recall that we were without power for several days. We had a kerosene stove in the basement and we had kerosene lamps, too. But one of the hardest things was losing power to the water pump, which meant no water for eating, washing or flushing the toilet.

That blizzard was one time when having a telephone party line came in handy. We shared out telephone line with perhaps eight other farm families, including Walter Joachims, Clifford Wolffs, Milbert Kuslers and I can’t remember who else. If someone else was on the line, we had to wait until they were finished before we could use the phone. We also shared the ringer with the Kusler family; our ring was two shorts, theirs was one long.

I’m not sure how it came about but during that blizzard someone on our party line picked up the phone and found a neighbor on the line and started talking, and pretty soon there were several others who had picked up and joined the conversation. Before hanging up they each agreed to pick up the phone again at a later designated time, as a way to check in with each other. I’m sure it was reassuring during that terrible storm to hear the neighbor’s voice, to know they were OK and to hear how they were coping. I think we lost our ability to make or receive other calls during that time. Again, my memory is hazy.

Doubtless others of you remember this time much better than I do. My Dad was coming home from Fargo when the storm hit and got stuck in Jamestown. But my brother Gerry, a senior then, was home and between him and Mom we got our chores done and survived. We didn’t lose any cattle but I’m not sure how Mom and Gerry got back and forth from the barn.

I was a sixth grader in 1966 and Mrs. Bauer was my teacher. Keith Kusler was one of my classmates and after the storm he told us how his parents had tied a rope around his waist and let him go out in the blizzard to experience its ferocity. Mrs. Bauer said something about whether they were tempted to cut the rope and leave him out there for a while. Keith and Mrs. Bauer had that kind of relationship. They loved to torment each other.

Stormy weather of any kind makes me very nervous, but I think the scariest of all to me is the ice storm. We were in church last week working at a Lenten dinner when the rain that had fallen all day started to freeze. I just wanted to go home, but Emily wanted to stay for the Good Friday pageant practice. Since we couldn’t go to Eureka, she argued, the least I could do was let her be in the pageant. So I reluctantly agreed after a friend agreed to give her a ride home. When she got home she couldn’t wait to tell me all about their ride across town. They had to stop several times to pull big tree branches out of the way of my friend’s car. Then they saw blue lightening, which turned out not to be lightening at all, but ice-covered windblown power lines smacking into each and electrical transformers exploding. "It was so cool!" she said. Meanwhile all I could think was, we’ll be bailing the sump hole by morning. As it turned out we didn’t lose power, so we didn’t need our electrical generator, at least this time. There’s still a lot of April left, and we haven’t fooled ourselves into thinking that winter’s let us off the hook yet. They don’t call this "the cruellest month" for nothing. Hoping you’re all warm and dry, Your friend, Paulette