December 18, 2013

HAT TIPS

Hello,

I’d like to start this week off by thanking some special people. There aren’t a lot of people in the world any more that take time to hand-write a letter. We send text messages with words like ty (thank you), c (see), wth… and more. But it seems letter writing, I mean setting down at a table with a pen and paper has kind of gone to the wayside. I’m as guilty, and maybe more so, than the next guy.
But occasionally I do receive a hand-written letter from someone who has read one of my columns and finds that it reminds them of something that happened to them, or reminds them of someone they knew, or the ranch where they grew up. I don’t have time to respond to this flood of mail (two letters) but I would like to thank them in this column. It’s letters like this that make me smile and begin writing this week’s column early Monday morning. Thank you. And Merry Christmas!
The weather straightened out a bit this week. After those terrible mornings with wind chills 40 to 55 below zero! More tolerable winter mornings now.
But during that cold snap I received a call from a friend who lives in northern Montana, up near the Canadian line. We keep in touch because I usually get his weather a day or two later.
He called me one morning and said it was touching 30 below and the wind was howling out of the northwest. It had been snowing and blowing for a day and a half. He wasn’t sure how much it had snowed, because it was drifting so badly.
The Montana rancher said it was so bad that his wife just stared through the kitchen window with a blank look on her face. He thought if it got much worse, he was going to have to get up and let her in! I thought “Shirley!”
Now I know, I know, this is not funny. But what made me think of it was a letter I did receive a few years ago. Maybe you have noticed, maybe not, but I occasionally mention my first wife, Shirley, in my column. Well, a few years ago I did receive one of those handwritten letters from a fan (well maybe not a fan, but a reader). She closed the letter by telling me that if she were my wife, I would either be dead or divorced!

Later,
Dean

WATFORD CITY WEATHER