HAT TIPS
Hello,
As I write this, the wind chill is minus 50! And it’s been that way for a couple days. Hopefully, by the time you read this story, this “polar vortex” has passed on by. Now, I never heard of a polar vortex before. I’m not sure how it is related to the “Siberian express” that used to bear down on us every winter. I sometimes think that the weathermen are kind of like me playing Scrabble. You can make up really neat words if you are bigger and stronger than the person you are playing against. I do know that the weathermen were pretty disappointed in our blizzard the other day. When there was no snow. Thankfully, because that old wind was a ripper!
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!”
I know that’s bad. But I couldn’t resist writing it on “Blue Monday!”
Hail the Bison!
Dean