Editor's note: This story was previously published in the "A Gathering of Memories", printed by Jim Rettig Publishing.
Around the first of January, winter started in earnest with a lot of snow and cold temperatures. The first of February, Bill Bailey and I had to go to Big Sandy, about 30 miles, for a load of hay.
We took an International one ton truck and a Big Brother International steel-wheeled tractor ahead of the truck, because the snow was so deep. The morning we started for home, it was about -30 degrees and not yet daylight. The tractor had no headlights, only the lights from the truck. We made it to where Ed Buchholz used to live by noon (about 10 miles). There, we left the tractor and had to drain the water out of the radiator.
Prestone was too expensive and the radiator was not good enough to hold Prestone anyway, so we used water. Ed Buchholz invited us to stay for dinner, but Bailey didn't want to waste any time. Since the road was plowed out from there, he thought we would be in Big Sandy in time to eat. The drifts in the road got worse and worse, so we had to leave the road and start across the fields.
We got about a mile from where Marlyn Cornett now lives and it was about midnight and -30 degrees. The truck started to overheat, because it was low on water. We had a 15 gallon barrel along that we brought gas in, so we broke the top of the barrel with a jack and filled it with snow. We made a fire out of some fence posts to melt the snow. Then we started pouring the water into the radiator and discovered the water was running right out the bottom, because we had lost the plug on the bottom. Then we walked to the Cornett place. Roarks lived there at the time. We woke them up and Mrs. Roark fixed us some hot cakes and coffee. We had not eaten since we left home 20 hours before.
The Roarks had only one bed, so Mrs. Roark slept some place else. Mr. Roark, Bill Bailey and myself slept in the bed, with me in the middle. Next morning, Mrs. Roark made us breakfast and we carried water to the truck. We made a wooden plug for the bottom of the radiator. There was a rock pile nearby, we thought we would load some rocks on the back of the truck to get more traction. The rocks were frozen together, so we used the truck crank to pry some loose, and broke the crank. The starter did not work, so we had to walk to Roark's to get another crank.
We then started out again and got to where N.R. Marten used to live by the second night. There we broke the truck chains and could not go any further. So we phoned into Big Sandy to see of we could get some help. Folks in Big Sandy sent out a school bus with a load of men and shovels. It was dark and they told us to watch for the bus lights.
When we saw the light coming across the fields, the bus was going to miss the place where we were stuck. I had to run across the field to stop the bus and just barely made it. Bailey was all tired out and they had to wait for him. We got a ride to town in the bus.
The next morning, I got Shorty Cross, who was hauling coal and had a load on his truck, come out and pull our truck into town. When we got the truck in, we had to buy a new battery, because the one we had froze and broke, and we bought new tire chains. We had to make arrangements with the county and pay for the gas to plow out the road, so we could go home with the hay (about a ton). The snow was so hard and deep that big chunks pushed out under the fences on each side of the road.
When we got started for home we got to Ed Buchholz' and stayed there overnight. Next morning, we started the tractor we had left some days ago, and continued home. We got home way after dark and the temperature was still -30 degrees. The folks at home were glad to see us, because there were no phones out this far from town and they had no way of knowing when we would be home from our snowy adventure.
We made several trips after hay that winter and experienced untold hardships.
