Lucky us

The snow was swirling yesterday afternoon outside my 9th-floor apartment. Inside, I was reading a charming book lent to me by my nephew's wife.

"Dick's Book: Reflections of a Farmer" is by Samuel Dick Harris, who is my nephew's wife's uncle, her mother's brother. He opens his book with stories about his life growing up on a farm in Spotsylvania County.

As the snow fell on a cold March afternoon in 2014, I came upon this passage describing a snowstorm that happened two years before I was born:

Anyone that lived in central Virginia in January of 1940 will never forget the snow that started on January 24th at around three or four o'clock in the afternoon. By bedtime, it was several inches deep and still coming down hard. When we got up the next morning, it had stopped snowing. You couldn't see out the back porch, for the snow was plastered all over the screen. When the screen door to the outside steps for the back porch was finally pried open, one looked out on a world buried in snow. Some people said it was three feet. I think twenty to twenty-four inches was more accurate. It was difficult to tell because the wind blew so hard and the snow drifted so badly. It totally covered up much of the fences. Of course, the roads were blocked. We didn't go to school for two weeks. The milking, feeding and watering of the cattle and chickens took all day. We had some wood stacked on the back porch for our heating and cooking. Until the wind stopped, it was useless to dig out a path, as it would soon drift full behind you. After the first day, it got extremely cold and set records that still hold until this day. It went below zero degrees Fahrenheit every morning for five days, with one reading of minus twelve degrees Fahrenheit in Richmond....

Samuel Dick Harris also describes the first tractor his father bought for farm work, the coming of electricity to his rural home, the installation of indoor plumbing, hog-killing time and other tough work on the farm, and the joys of running barefoot all through the summer. His account is all the more delightful to read because of the straightforward, no-nonsense style in which he writes.

We've had snow in dribs and drabs this winter, but "Dick's Book" was a good reminder that we've had nothing to compare with the winter of 1940 -- so far.

It was a good book to spend an afternoon with on a snowy day and think about our good fortune, even in the winter of 2014.