From the files of Don Kirk…
December 23, 1943, 7:00 a.m.
We are uncertain about the distance from our house to my grandparents’ farm. On a summer day, or even a warm day in winter, their farm is 201 miles by road to the northeast. On a day when the temperature drops below freezing the distance changes on the same route to 196 miles. The colder the weather the closer the farm. Today is near zero. My dad says he expects we will have to go only 180 miles or so to get to the farm.

These differences have to do with the speedometer in our 1940, two-door Chevy. On warm days no one notices the speedometer, but on cold days a growling noise comes out of the dash behind the steering wheel. Days that are 30º F below zero are rare in our area of the Rockies, but my dad thinks that when such a day happens, my grandparents’ prairie farm should be just around the corner. My mom thinks dad is crazy.
The car is packed with gifts, Christmas decorations, food, lots of warm clothing, six heavy blankets, three gallons of water, a short handled shovel, an axe, a one man crosscut saw, twenty feet of heavy chain and a five gallon can of gas. As much of this as possible we stow in the trunk. The food and water, which we don’t want to freeze, are loaded in the back seat.

Our small town newspaper never prints a weather report. The only radio station we get with regularity is KOA in Denver. They never say much about the weather outside the greater Denver area and the farm is far east of Denver. All we get out of KOA this morning is that heavy snowfall chokes the roads. We can see that just by looking out the kitchen window. With snow falling in our mountain town and in Denver, it is probably snowing all the way to the farm.

Most of our town’s streets are gravel, so we get plenty of practice driving on snow-covered dirt roads. This helps when we drive to the farm in winter, since about half the distance is on gravel roads. An uncle from California once asked my dad why he didn’t use his tire chains in snow. My dad answered that he didn’t own any, and he didn’t know anyone in town who did. What’s more, he had never even seen tire chains for sale anywhere in town. We have lived all our lives in snow country and have driven east to the prairie farm before on snowy days, so we don’t worry about it. Besides, my parents agree that even a blizzard can’t snuff out the Spirit of Christmas.

Will We Make It?
At eight a.m. we leave the house. It’s snowing harder and six inches of fresh powder snow cover the city streets. My dad figures it will take six or seven hours to reach the farm. We turn onto the highway going east, a good paved road. Our side of the road is freshly plowed. So fresh, in fact, that we think the snowplow must be not far ahead. Even so, it takes a good ten miles to find the plow going amazingly fast, throwing a steady stream of snow off to the side of the road. The plow kicks up a thick cloud of the powder snow. The driver of the plow sees us and slows so we can pass. But now we have six inches of fresh snow to deal with. My dad worries that maybe we can’t keep ahead of the plow. In just a few miles we come to where both sides of the road are plowed. Not only can we go faster, but the plow behind us turns around to clear the other side of the highway back to town. Even better, a couple of cars heading west pass by us showing that conditions ahead are good.
Traveling northeast, we pass through Colorado Springs on paved, plowed streets out onto the prairie proper. Time slips by as we go through small towns with curious names like Falcon, Peyton, Calahan, Ramah, and Simla.

Reaching Limon, we leave the paved highway and head north on a gravel road. It’s a good road, but a wind has come up. Thick snowfall trims visibility to fifty yards. Dad cuts our speed to thirty miles per hour. It seems to take forever to reach Last Chance where we turn east onto a paved highway.

Travel conditions rapidly worsen. The snowstorm has become a blizzard. At mid-afternoon, the sky is dark. Wind shakes the car as we creep along. An occasional car or truck meets us. We feel nearly alone on the highway. The road is built above the surrounding prairie so that wind tends to blow the snow off the road. In the swales, blowing snow can make deep drifts across the highway. We come to one of these low places in the road. Our car has no trouble pushing through the small drift at the bottom. But, it is ten miles to the next town, and we worry a little about getting there. Maybe that is why that last town we went through is called Last Chance.

We meet a snowplow and quit worrying. The wind picks up, blowing so hard we can’t tell if it is snowing or the wind blowing snow around. Although we passed that plow only a few minutes ago, the low places in the road are already thickly covered with snow. Several cars go by, so we feel encouraged about the road ahead. They probably feel the same in seeing us. We are going no faster than ten or fifteen miles per hour, a slow pace which puts us far behind schedule. It’s only five p.m., but with these short December days and the dense storm cloud, it’s getting very dark. Two or three miles go by and through the darkness and swirling snow we see the lights of Anton, where we leave the highway.
We have been to Anton many times over the years and know the town well. There isn’t much to know, anyway. Next to the railroad tracks sits a huge grain elevator. The town is too small to have a water tower. Everyone has their own well. A gas station and garage repair everything from farm equipment to household washing machines. Next door a grocery store still has lights on. The post office is dark. Only five or six homes are in the whole town. Christmas trees glow in the front windows of two houses.

A two-story hotel, lighted and open, looks good to us. The farm is twenty miles north of Anton on an unplowed dirt road. While that might not seem far, under these conditions my grandparents’ cozy farmhouse might as well be in China. This blizzard is dumping snow on the ground at three or four inches per hour. Even if the snowfall stopped, the wind is piling it into high drifts. We have no intention of going any farther today…to be continued.

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