by Pat Merewether

Created on: January 07, 2009

We moved into our little house in rural Michigan in August and thought we'd died and gone to heaven. We were surrounded by Sugar Maple trees that turned our whole world into a red and yellow fantasy in autumn. Then came winter. Our elderly neighbor, who lived in the area for sixty years, said it was the biggest snowstorm she could ever remember.

The first two days were kind of fun. Our daughter age ten and son age tweleve enjoyed the snow days. We watched TV, made fudge, put together a jigsaw puzzle and built a few snow people. Then the power went out. That was not fun.

My daughter and I rounded up all the candles we could find and set them up in the middle of the kitchen table. Being new to rural life, we only had a few candles and two of them were those musical kind that play "Happy Birthday" when lit. We saved those for last as they became very annoying, especially when my husband stuck one in a loaf of bread and used it as a nightlight to find the bathroom at two in the morning.

Our daughter had a pet Hermit crab and he had to be kept warm. So we put a votive candle into his aquarium. This seemed to help, except the room took on a kind of fishy smell when his little environment warmed up too much. We started taking turns watching the candle, crab and thermometer in his 'room'.

The temperatures hoverd around thirty-two, so we managed to bundle up and keep warm with the help of the fireplace.

By the fourth day the power was back on, what a relief because we'd gotten down to just the birthday candle and even the crab was going crazy from it.

Finally the snowplow came through and we finished digging out the driveway. It wasn't too hard as we'd been using the driveway to make the snow people and had 'rolled' most of it away.

My husband went to work and I decided to try to get to the grocery store. I bundled up the kids and backed our 1978 Oldsmobile carefully into the road. Driving on the snow-covered hilly roads suddenly lost its rural charm. I finally understood the meaning of 'white knuckle driving' but all went well until we were about a half mile from the main highway. Then I freaked. A kid on a snowmobile zoomed out of the woods and crossed the road right in front of us. I did all the wrong things of course. I shrieked and slammed on the breaks (this was way before ABS) and off we went into a shallow ditch.

The kids and I got out of the car and decided to pour some kitty litter under the tires for traction. Selma, our elderly neighbor had warned us to carry a

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