Chapter 17

I tried ... really I did. I just couldn’t get there until it was too late.

By the middle of February the plows ran. Late one night the chinook wind started to blow, by morning the snow was gone. Fifty two inches of snow melted in six hours. Three days sooner and we could have saved her.

Consuelo Juanita Rodriguez de Soto Cabrillo de Pineda, American, died in childbirth at home in Wolf Township, Wyoming. Attempts by snowmobile rescue failed to reach her in time. Mrs. Pineda is survived by her husband Edgar de Pineda. She was 19. Interment for Mrs. Pineda and her stillborn son, will be in San Diego, California in the Cabrillo family cemetery.

Connie is gone ... Edgar is gone ... I can’t stop crying. There was so much blood.

Her last words to me, “What will Edgar do?”

That is the only question I can answer ... Edgar went to Texas.

When they arrived, having come overland, the Rescue people had to pull me away from her cold dead body, her still born son, cord still a link between them, laying on her chest. There was so much blood!

The snows let up just long enough to get her and her son flown to San Diego ... they wouldn’t let me on the aircraft. I’m still sick. The phones are still down. I sent Hairy a letter. I feel helpless.

Kiewit Coal sent out the delivery truck. I didn’t call. The Federals were sending emergency coal resupplies to every known customer. I got 24 tons ... where am I going to put it? Right now, what I couldn’t shovel through the loading port is sitting under a tarp by the backdoor ... maybe 9 tons?

The Chinook lasted six days ... long enough for my butcher to bring out a load for the freezer ... long enough for the Ski-Doo franchise to completely sell out of snowmobiles ... long enough for the college to start classes again ... long enough for the Guard to deliver twenty CASES of C-4 rations ... long enough for me to be trapped in the Avocado garage when the Alberta Clipper slammed us ... twenty two hours of seventy mile an hour snow laden winds. It’s less than three hundred yards from the Avocado to my back door ... I couldn’t even see my house. As I was watching the yard light shattered. No way was I trying to get home. I have no idea where my horses are.

There are lights on in the trailer. Some poor soul caught in the storm? Refuge is never denied in winter. I’ll find out about it when the wind stops. The electric stayed on. The phone went down but we had power.

The Guard, familiar with the Avocado, but unaware of the cabin, delivered the small rectangular heavy cardboard crates that weighed 40 lbs. and had a volume of 1.12 Cubic Feet to the garage.

Each crate contained 8 daily rations of 3 meals each for a total of 24 “M” units, 24 “B” units, and 24 accessory packs, included 8 cans of Meat and Beans, 8 cans of Meat & Vegetable Hash, and 8 cans of Meat & Vegetable Stew, generally identical to the World War C rations.

The difference was the “accessory pack.” It contained 1 instruction sheet, 2 cheese bars (1.5 net ounces/43 g net), 2 cereal class 5 bars (1.5 net ounces/43 g net), 3 type XII style 1 enriched chocolate bars (1 ounce/28 g), 1 jelly bar (2 ounces/56 g), 2 Fruit Cake Bars (2 ounces/56 g), 3 sticks Topps chewing gum, 3 Domino sugar packets, 3 Nestea “soluble tea product” packets, 1 packet of pure soluble sugar, 1 packet of soluble cream product, 1 bottle water purification tablets, 1 plastic bag, five cigarettes and a book of strike anywhere matches. (WIKI) All products were dated 1958.

All in all ... they weren’t bad. By the end of the storm, my evaluation had changed. They made a turd. Another day and I might have pitched them out the door and took my chances.