Sam and Snow

From Drop Box

Saturday was like a kidney punch.

Emily and I went to the store to buy wood and parts for my eternal cabinet project, no it's still not done. While we were gone the wind picked up and the snow began to drift. We didn't get any new snow, but the old snow assaulted the roads and pushed cars into the ditches. It was easy to see the snow was winning. As we turned onto 1200 South we got stuck in a drift in the middle of the road. I got out to see how bad it was and if we could push it out. Emily jumped out too and somehow the car keys were locked inside. So there were were, now above knee deep in snow with the car running, locked. Stuck.

A guy in a truck stopped and offered to help us get out. It turns out he is a plant breeder too, what a wierd coincidence. He just moved back to town and is opening a new research center for Monsanto just miles from my house. He drove us home over the field - which was free of snow now that it was piled against my car. We drove around looking for chains and ended up at my neighbor's house, his second or third cousin (everyone from Indiana is related to all the other Hoosiers somehow, the ward pedigree is like that too). My neighbor got his bobcat and we all set out, loaded with chains, tow straps, and snow shovels to counterattack.

As we were driving over there, the bobcat got stuck. Then we were going around in the field and got stuck trying to get out on the road. A police officer in another 4 wheel drive pulled the good samaritan that was helping me. Then we dug out the bobcat, then we dug out my car. Just as we finished and I pulled my car back onto the blacktop, the snowplow came through, followed by a white truck going way too fast.

The white truck had just come from my house where he had run over my dog and killed Sam. Sam had chased something into the road and right in front of the truck. Leila watched it from the window and remembered thinking, "He is going to get killed if he runs in the road like that someday." Then the truck appeared, and Sam died pretty much on impact.

When I got home, Leila said something about Sam and I thought he had gotten into the neighbors garbage cans or something. But no, he was on the side of the road and she needed help to move him. We got him into the car and then wrapped him in a sheet in the garage.

The ground is frozen solid. We haven't been able to bury him yet so there he still is. I still can't believe it.

Then Sunday, my cows got out and I spent the whole morning at the same neighbor whose Bobcat got stuck trying to get my cows away from his cows and back in our pasture. What a weekend.

I had a dream that I was feeding the pig and Sam kept chasing it round and around the barn. I chased them, always just out of sight. When I turned around to yell at him, I realized that he wasn't there and then I was alone in the field with the snow swirling around me in the dark.