Keillor Christmas

After reading Garrison Keillor's A Christmas Blizzard (to gut-wrenching laughter) I took pause to reflect upon those times when I, too, was stranded by snow. Those were the days.

Only people my age or older can remember the Indiana blizzard of 1978. That year, in January, there was more than 30 inches of snow that fell to the ground. I was in high school at the time. To the best of my memory, our little high school in Sullivan county missed two consecutive weeks of classes, in part because there was also a coal strike that year and there was not enough "fuel" to heat the buildings. I do recall playing one varsity basketball game in the gym (unheated) where you could see your own breath and we were instructed by the coach to "not stop moving" after we had worked up a sweat. The beads could actually freeze to the skin. People were sitting in the stands wearing parkas, scarves, and covered in blankets.

That was also the year my friends and I went sledding every day instead of going to school. We drove miles into the country (frequently getting stuck) but we would pull our cars out with chains and muscle. We sledded in the old strip mining camps (which was illegal and very dangerous) on top of car hoods. I'm talking major drop off, very fast, and scary. Looking back, I'm amazed we survived that winter. We could have died in a car crash, hit a tree on the sled, or perished in some other form of teenage idiocy. Of course, our parents had no idea we were doing this, and the snow was so thick, and the coal strike continuous, the mines were empty. We just walked into the mines and sledded.

Of course, one of the reasons I have faith in God is because I am still alive. If anyone survives adolescence they should drop to their knees, eat a licorice whip, and thank the Almighty for mercy.

Keillor understands this, too. He wrote about it.