Do You Want It Bad Enough?

I will list three of my longest nights. The year was 1938 or 1939 (I’m a little hazy on the exact year) and we were experiencing one of our worst winter blizzards. After basketball practice, I started walking my five mile trip home. Soon the strong wind, sleet and bitter cold began taking a toll on me and I had only traveled four city blocks. My face felt like a piece of raw beefsteak. The sleet felt like shot pellets hitting me. I finally made it out of the city limits and wondered what I was going to do. I had already fallen down dozens of times and the frozen ruts hurt plenty. My only option was to try and make it to the Spring Creek Bridge about a half mile away for shelter and a place to sleep. I finally reached the bridge, but the ground was too slick for me to get under, and the howling wind made it a wind tunnel. Probably other varmints had beaten me under the bridge so it wasn’t a good choice anyway. At this point I was half frozen and getting low on energy and crying was no option. I knew that there was a farmhouse at the top of a steep hill about another quarter mile ahead. If I could make it up that slick hill there was a fifty-gallon barrel, which the farmer used to scald the hair off of hogs when he was butchering. With hay in the barn, this would have been a dream. I knew the farmer had several hound dogs that stayed in the barn and I couldn’t take the chance of them sounding the alarm and I certainly wasn’t in the mood for feeling some hot lead. I finally made it to the house and rolled the hog barrel as close and as quietly as I could to the side of the barn so the wind would not get into the barrel. I crawled into this ice and snow covered barrel and pulled my large raincoat collar over my head so that my breath would help heat my body. This was absolutely heavenly and the steady beat of the sleet put me to sleep in minutes. Come morning I had to get out of there before the hounds discovered the uninvited guest, and I certainly didn’t want any shot coming at me (I felt like I had plenty from the sleet). I could hardly move because I was so stiff and cold. I looked like a zombie and walked even worse. I don’t know what I smelled like, but I got out of there, slid down the big hill and made it back to town and nothing was moving. The sleet had stopped but it was cold (zero, I was told later) and the blizzard had not let up. I knew that the school doors were not opened until eight o’clock, but I remembered the janitor came to school every morning at six o’clock to fire up the furnace. I took a chance that the back door of the janitor’s room might be unlocked if only I could make it there. To my surprise, it was unlocked. I was hardly inside the door when I met the janitor coming down the hall. He stopped and I swear that his hair was standing straight up in surprise. He asked what had happened to me. He took me into his room and took out his pocket knife. I was wondering what would happen next. He started scraping me from head to foot. There must have been a gallon of red and white hog hair on the floor when he finished. I had been called a human in sheep’s wool, but never one in hog’s hair. I believe that all of the schools were canceled that day, but I wasn’t about to leave that building. Some of the boys living in town practiced basketball. After practice I started my four mile hike back home again. I went several blocks and I knew that I was in big trouble. It was a terrible night! My first option was to find a house that had a porch on its east side. That would provide a windbreak and a place to sleep. This was easier than I had thought and I found a house behind a local merchandise store with no light on. I came up the alley and quietly crawled on the porch and leaned up against the wall before pulling my raincoat collar over my head. It was cold but comfortable otherwise. I fell asleep quickly. I knew that I had to leave there before daybreak since I wasn’t interested in meeting the town policeman. I tried and tried to wake up, but couldn’t. It was like a terrible dream where I couldn’t wake up. While it was wonderful sleeping, the reason I couldn’t wake up or see out was because I was covered in drifting snow that was between one and two feet deep. My bed on this porch was as warm as my upstairs room at home that had no heat. I would have been easy to track that morning, so I got out of there before daybreak and headed back to the janitor’s room at school. Again the janitor was startled and I told him my story. He said that I would never survive another night like that. He offered to bring me some food but I explained that I had food since several days before I had purchased a nickel’s worth of bananas and had hid them behind the stage curtains in the gym. The snow was blowing windy and cold and I dreaded the thought of the four mile walk. Now for the good news-the janitor offered me the furnace room to sleep in that night. I was never so excited in my whole life.