DECEMBER '07 SNOWSTORM
by Tony Taton

Although we don’t get the heavy snow like we did years ago, every few years we get a dandy with a foot or more of drifting snow. This is what we received on the last week of December as the cold masses met out in Colorado in the Rockies and came across the plains to the Lake Huron area. Church was canceled for the second time since 1964 at St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church in Lexington, as the heavy snow fell over a period of 18 or 20 hours until the ground, roads, trees and housetops were covered with 12 inches of heavy, wet snow.

Power was out in parts of the area, and heavy snow downed utility lines, tree limbs, heavy laden with snow and draping over roads, homes and garages, while road crews kept busy until some hours after the storm abated.

As usual, some problems came during the storm and one happened two doors from our home with two of our senior neighbors (Otto and Gloria Riverter), on the corner of Lester and old Orchard Bluff streets. On early Monday, Gloria went out to pick up their empty rubbish container sometime near eight o’clock. She slipped and fell and couldn’t get up, while Otto was asleep in bed. Both are pretty well handicapped with health problems. Gloria laid on the icy street for over an hour without any heavy clothes on, as no one came by, as no one knew she was there.

The bad part was her falling, and the good part was that the man on the village snowplow turned out in the street to miss the empty containers and did not run over Gloria as she laid waiting for help. Otto then looked out and saw her, called 911 and stayed with her until she was taken to the hospital in Port Huron. Two days later after she was back home, Gloria realized how lucky she had been, for the driver of the snowplow never saw her on the road, as he later told me when I spoke to him in church.

As I told him the story after church, he said he was the driver and hadn’t known it happened at all, and was amazed he never saw her. A guardian angel (Ardith Bills), stopped by as I was cleaning my driveway out for the second time. Ardith saw me and stopped by and told me the Riverter’s driveway was full of snow from the plow and said the folks were due at the hospital in Port Huron in an hour. She said she would clean it but her back wouldn’t allow her to do it. I thanked her for telling me, grabbed a snow shovel and cleaned the drive for the old folks, happy to be able to help them.

We had a branch break from the heavy snow and fell on our roof. My good bride said it should come off the roof. I got a ladder out of the garage, trimmed the branch from the ladder, cut it in two pieces from the roof - all in a day’s work, as my dad would say when we were kids growing up in the village.

My bride informed me I was a little old for flight time on a roof; not really, for age is as old as you feel. Otto is 91 and Gloria, a child bride, is 82. Both are frisky and extremely stubborn, perhaps this is what helped them along their long life road. God bless both of them and Ardith Bills, their watch angel.