The Reindeer Keeper

On my way back home late this morning from participating in a Grandparents Day breakfast with a 4-year old little fisherman who left us both sticky from maple syrup as we laughed and talked about perch and walleye and his upcoming Fishing Birthday Party and he showed me the right way to drink chocolate milk from a small container using a straw, I thought about his saying goodbye after giving me a sticky kiss and sticky hug.. “Love you too G raGra,” he waved as he disappeared around a corner on his way back to his classroom. He’d been chosen to be the caboose-the child at the end of the line-so he was able to wave goodbye to me all the way down the hall. When he disappeared around that corner I felt my heart sink. A few hours later I was back at that school-back in that cafeteria enjoying a Grandparents Day lunch with a 7-year old granddaughter. To see her smile when she saw me made it feel like Christmas. I was certain the rain falling was really snow and the gentlema...

All the recent news about snowstorms, blizzards, and Nor'Easters got me thinking about snowstorms of long ago on the family farm and how they survived. After all, there were no 24-hour news outlets; no weather channels sending out alerts and updates and warnings to stay off the roads or informing the public that airports and train terminals were closed or what pin-pointed time one could expect a surge in snowfall or when high wind velocities would blow through or if ice was expected to cover anything and everything. No news casters were sent out with a camera crew to capture the storm before, during, and after it struck. No Anderson Cooper-types or young women reporters with perfect make-up and designer snow gear were hunkered down in my grandfather's pasture measuring the snow drifts or standing by the creek bed documenting the snow ripping across the backfields for all the world to see. And if there had been-no one would have cared because everyone back the...