December 20, 2016

HAT TIPS

Hello,
It was fun waking up this morning and looking at the thermometer! Fifty degrees warmer than it was two days ago! Only in North Dakota does 20 above and windy qualify as a nice day. But dang, it is.
On Saturday it was too cold to put your tongue on the flag pole. And every year I have to try it. Shirley figures eventually I will outgrow it, but I keep hearing of ways to get it off that don’t hurt. I’m beginning to think those are made up!
I’m wondering how some of our southern friends in the oil field are handling this. They have to be some tough old cowboys to crawl up on that rig when it’s way below zero and that wind is blowing 30 or 40 mph. Kind of like a friend I talked to yesterday. He asked what I was doing and I told him I had just put my horse away after riding (I was lying). Told him it wasn’t too bad (-55) because I wore a facemask. He said he was sure wishing he had worn one!
I used to do quite a lot of winter riding. But not on that kind of day. And if you had to, most of the time you were leading your horse to keep your toes from freezing off. And the past couple days, as sitting in a heated cab on a tractor feeding cows, was dang glad I wasn’t harnessing a team and pitching hay out of a sweet clover stack to feed cows. Those “good old days” were a bugger.
Again this week I talked to my Montana friend. You know, the one with the wife. Yeah, that one. Have to check in with him to get a weather report every once in awhile so I know what is coming.
Turns out the guy knows a doctor in Watford City. And occasionally goes down there for a checkup. Now, I’m not one to drop names around but the guy is a scratch golfer. And does venture to Las Vegas once in awhile on a golf outing.
My cowboy friend said a neighbor of his went down to Watford for a checkup. Boy, they worked him up and down. They poked and prodded and reviewed his history and said for a 55-year-old man, he couldn’t be in any better shape. If he kept up his lifestyle, he shouldn’t have to come in for another checkup for years.
Well, as the neighbor walked out the door, bang! He dropped over dead!
My cowboy friend confronted the doctor golfer and pointed out that was pretty damn bad advertising for the hospital to have a guy drop just as he left the hospital and had that glowing report.
The doctor said, “It happens occasionally and we just turn them around so it looks like they were walking in!”
Later,
Dean

WATFORD CITY WEATHER