Date of publication: February 14, 2000

"Valentines Day 1923"

Comments on this column:

Hi Mike:

I was chilled when I first received your email, then I discussed with my wife (who grew up in Minnesota -- BRRR!)

She pointed out that all northerners learn early on how to deal with such horrible weather emergencies. Even a child would have dug an improvised snow shelter, erecting a barricade againt the wind, perhaps stripping to form a collective cocoon of clothing and huddling naked together for warmth; as the snow drifted over, the family would have been in a perfectly survivable situation. Apparently sled dogs sleep in snow burrows in the Yukon on a regular basis in blizzard conditions, with no ill effects.

As for the horse, and releasing it: anyone who watched "The Empire Strikes Back" can think of an (possibly impractical under the circumstances) option. As it is, the father could have twisted the horse's neck, forcing him to lay down, covered its eyes to keep it docile, and had the family huddle behind this combination heat source/weather barricade. If the father DID think the horse could possibly find its way to shelter, he should have freed it from its reins & other traces, tied the family together in a file with their belts, and let the horse lead them all to safety by grasping its tail and following behind it.

I'm not doubting the accuracy of the story. If you found it on file, it must be true. I guess it just sounds like one of those urban legends because of its illogicality. It was a true tragedy, the father was heroic and saved his family at the cost of his life, but it was a sacrifice I just don't see as necessary. Unless there are factors to the situation that the narrator neglected to share with us, the father should have survived.

M. H.

RESPONSE:

There are numerous accounts, thousands, I should imagine, of people freezing to death in blizzards in Minnesota and the Dakotas. they walk to the outhouse, and can;t find their way back to the house, and die in the yard, 30 feet from safety. It's confusing when visibility is zero.

I don't think we are hardwired to dig snow burrows, or use animals for warmth. Some of us might be resourceful enough to come up with that. You don't know when a storm comes up how long it will last -- so a temporary shelter can easily become a tomb. Compare this situation to a flash flood. If a horse is hysterical, as this one sounds, maybe you don't want it rolling over on your family?

I don't know that the father KNEW the horse would be safe -- just that he allowed it to make its own luck -- not something you would necessarily tether your family's survival to.

Just hypothesizing.

In any event, this was a sleet storm, not a big snow. It is not possible to make a burrow of ice. It splatters, freezes, and makes statues of everything it hits. And even if you could make a burrow of it, ice provides no insulating value, as nice billowy snow does. The only insulating factor along this road that day was the father's greatcoat lining.

I can't absolutely attest to the truth of the story. I stupidly snatched it from the wire box at my paper, put it in a pocket, wrote my version from it late one night, and didn't save the wire copy (printed on paper towel stock).

Doubtless AP-Sioux Falls or AP-Rapid City has some record of it somewhere. If I had time, and incentive, I would delve into that .... but I don't.

I can guarantee that my part of this is true -- I learned the story in the late 1970s -- kind of before the urban folklore craze. Many hoaxes have been perpetrated over the years -- especially in the outstate regions. Alexandria runestone, etc.

In those days I imported several stories from regional oral histories and made them my own. Another is at http://mfinley.com/poems/oldstonebook.htm. I can't guarantee the truth of the story, only that I heard it just about that way.

My inclination is to focus on the iconic heroism of the father, not on "Am I being fooled?" If this is a hoax, it seems to be a benign one.

Best to you ... Michael F.


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(The following is a true story. I encountered it in 1977, in a wire piece sent to me by the South Dakota Associated Press. when I was the news editor of the Worthington Daily Globe.)

 

We left home that morning in the single-seat sleigh, the thirteenth of February, my mama and papa, my brother Eldred and me, Leona, for Gramma's house twelve miles away.

Papa kept urging us, he'd say, You hurry up Leona, that wind is up to something or other, and aught but a fool would tempt it. And Papa wore his great brown coat with the horse's hair collar, the one that reached all the way to his boots, and I sat beside him and held on to his pocket, and Eldred and Mom held each other for heat.

Frazie, our old mare, at first she didn't want to go, you could see it plain when she looked over her shoulder, peering through her mane at the door to the barn and the straw-warmed stall.

But Papa liked saying that an old horse couldn't do else but obey, so eventually she lit out, headed into the wind already so strong it blew your eyes dry.

None of us talked up top in the sleigh, and the shrill in the ear even drownded out Papa's coaxing the horse.

Wind weren't nothing new to us, and Hankinson was but twelve mile, and Frazie was a good enough of a horse. Yet still the clouds took on a ugly look. Eldred, and he was older than me, began crying by and by, but I sat still while the snow commenced to swirl. Papa cursed and Mama gave him the scold for that.

At one point he decided the kind thing was to fling down the reins and unfasten Frazie, and slap her for luck in finding some still place nearby. But before that horse took two full steps she vanished in the white.

I swear that storm must of hated us, because it swore and shouted and stomped for hours, shouted evilly every instant. Mama cupped her hands and called out into Papa's ear, but no one heard, and Mama looked on us terrible grievious, and just as grievious was what she said. She said Children, gather round my knees.

And we both of us knelt beneath Mama's petticoat and dress, Eldred holding her right leg and me having hold on the left, and Mama crouched over us two and Papa stood strong and tall in the single seater, the great brown coat teepeed around his shoulders and stretched down around us all.

And there he stood bare faced to the storm that screamed through the day, until I began to hear, in the midst of the clamor, my heart and my mama's and Eldred's hearts beating in threes, and no one said nothing. Eldred and I held hold to the hem of Mama's dress, tucking it time and again underneath us. Throughout, Papa never shifted weight.

I recall when Mama started to shake and I knew she was weeping, and Eldred'd gone to sleep on my arm, and I did what I could to try and be brave.

But for one small second when I thought of my Papa and couldn't hold onto myself any longer and dug my fingers into Mama's leg, and thought nobody'd hear me up top of the roar, I shouted Papa, Papa, don't die.

He stood like that for twenty hours, all through the night and on into morning. And when I awakened I knew from the cracking of ice outside it was over. All of us below lost fingers and toes and Mama lost both ears as well and almost lost her nose. We were a fright to see.

And Papa was dead like we knew he would be. He was all froze through and could not be lifted, not by the minister who came out from Hankinson to help the farmer from over the hill who showed up with Frazie tethered and well. Would you believe it, we was only ten trees from help all the while.

I wished you could of seen my Papa, his eyes was frozen open, still blue, you could tell he was thinking of something far off.

I tried saying goodbye but it was like tapping through ten panes of glass, and I had lost the feeling in my hands. The reverend backed me away by the shoulder but I pushed his mitt away and cried.

Oh Papa, I complained to him that Valentine's day, the way I always did -- How could you stand there that way, and still leave us?

 

 

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