Hear the Wind Blow

Recently I’ve been hearing from friends in our old home of a windstorm that lasted several days. It reminded me of how much I hate the wind.

It seems like we got severe windstorms several times every year which caused all sorts of problems. I didn’t mind so much when it snowed, but it seems like within a day of a snowstorm, along would come a huge wind to stack the snow up in drifts.

One day I was watching a neighbor’s child while her mother went to the hospital to have a baby. By the time her mother came home from the hospital, it snowed, it blew, and the road was filled with 5 feet of snow. The little girl ended up staying with us for several days until snowplows manned by the Alaska National Guard came to reopen our road.

Sometimes when the road filled up with snow, the surrounding fields would be scoured clean of any snow. At least once after being snowbound for a week, we escaped by driving across the fields since the road was not usable.

We had a greenhouse about 8’ x 16’ so we could grow tomatoes. It was covered with fiberglass panels. The peak of the roof was covered by a special metal strip. One day the wind blew hard with gusts up to 117 mph. It took that metal strip and just sort of rolled it up like those old metal strips you roll off with a key on a Spam can. Then it blew away all the fiberglass panels.

Of course wind chill was always something we watched out for. At school the children went out for recess unless the temperature was lower than -10F when adjusted for wind chill.

Sometimes the wind was blowing hard when the school bus pulled up to the school in the morning. It was strong enough to blow the little kids head over heels across the school yard. When the children arrived they were kept on the bus until adults and larger 5th and 6th graders could get out to the bus. Each adult could usually hold on to 4 small children to get them safely into the school.

One time I HAD to get into town when our road was snowed shut, so I had to hike up the road to the main road where a friend picked me up.

Kindergartners were released from school about 11:30. Sometimes when the road closed, another mother from our carpool picked up my child and dropped her off at the top of the road. I would hike up to the road pulling a plastic sled. On the way back home, it was downhill, so we’d both climb on the sled and slide on home with the wind pushing us along.

I could handle the cold, long winters, but I don’t miss those windstorms!