The Plow Blade I Welded for Dad

It did not snow in November. The first week of December gave us a dusting, nothing the women on the road could not sweep off their own steps. Dad checked the forecast every morning on the radio and said nothing.

Then the Thursday before Christmas the weather service put out a winter storm warning for the whole Driftless. Eight to ten inches, wind behind it.

I called Troy that afternoon.

“Storm’s coming tonight,” I said. “Dad needs the blade.”

“I know about the storm,” he said. “I’ve got eighteen driveways lined up. Inga, I’ve got eighteen people who are paying me.”

“You said you’d have it back.”

“I’ll run it out there when I’m done in town. Tomorrow afternoon.”

“Hedvig’s 91. She can’t wait till tomorrow afternoon. She’s got a doctor’s appointment Friday.”

“Then somebody can drive her,” he said, and he hung up.

That was my mistake, and I own it. I should have gone. I should have gone to Dad’s that night and sat at his table and made him promise not to do anything foolish. I did not, because I did not think an 86-year-old man would go out with a shovel at dawn.

I did not know my father as well as I thought I did.

It snowed all night. I was up at four with my husband, because I am always up at four with my husband, and I watched his headlights go down the road in the dark with the plow truck from the township ahead of him, throwing snow.

The township plows the road. They do not plow the lanes. A lane in our country can run a quarter mile or more from the road to the house, and nobody plows it but you.

I worked in the shop all morning on a manure spreader apron chain for a neighbor. Around eleven I called Dad’s house to ask if he wanted me to bring him soup. Nobody answered.

I drove over. His truck was in the yard. The tractor was in the shed, with no blade on the front of it. His boots were gone from the porch, and the scoop shovel was gone from the hook by the door.

I knew where he was before I turned around. There is only one lane on that road that faces north and drifts shut every storm, and only one woman on it who is 91.

So that is how I came to be kneeling in the snow in front of Hedvig’s step, with my father’s hands under mine.

I got him into my truck. Hedvig would not let go of him until he was in the seat, and then she stood in the snow in her slippers and watched us back down the forty feet he had cleared.

“Tell him thank you,” she said through the window. “Tell him I said he’s a stubborn old Norwegian and thank you.”

“I’ll tell him,” I said.

Then I went out on his porch in the cold and I called Troy again.

He answered on the first ring, and I could hear his truck running, and the scrape of a blade on concrete.

“Dad tried to shovel Hedvig out,” I said. “I found him on her step. He couldn’t talk.”

There was a little quiet on the line. I will give him that. There was a little quiet.