Snowed in For Three Days at Work

Legends like the one the late Gordon Lightfoot sang about in “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” are legends found in the Presque Isle natives living in the soul of Gitchegumee later renamed Lake Superior. I had been stationed at K.I. Sawyer in 1982 where according to the legend, snow has been known to fall in all twelve months of the year and is not measured in inches---Oh no---snow is measured here in feet. From the pages of legends of the great copper mines of Upper Michigan, I present a legend that will always be a part of my own personal lore.

The snow started falling when I got to the parking lot to go home from my duty station at the Supply Squadron at KI Sawyer Air Force Base in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Even though it was St. Patrick’s Day weekend, snow was not uncommon here.

I heard that some personnel who had been stationed here a while saw snow at least once in every month of the year. While I had only been at this base for almost two years, I had seen snow in eleven months of the year, every month except July.

“Hey.” My roommate Justin greeted me when I walked into the door of our trailer.

“It’s snowing out.” I told him.

“Figures.” He shrugged.

“There’s only a dusting so far.” I took off my jacket.

“Good. I am so sick of snow.” He grumbled.

“I may hit the sack early tonight.” I informed him.

“Fine.” He nodded as he continued to watch the local news on television.

“It’s been a long week.” I yawned.

“Weather report says we should get a few inches.” He reported a few minutes later.

“Don’t they know it’s almost spring?” I shook my head.

The telephone rang at about seven in the evening. When someone calls at that time, it’s usually bad news. Justin had gone out to the store for some odds and ends.

“Hello?” I had no choice since I was alone.

“Hey Sarge.” It was Terry.

“Yes boss.” I cradled the phone between my shoulder and my ear.

“Rick got pulled over on his way to work.” He did not sound happy.

“Oh yeah.” I shrugged since Rick was always slacking off. He was given the graveyard shift which started around nine o’clock and ended at Oh-six hundred hours when Terry would come into the office at Demand Processing.

“He blew a 1.1 Breath Alcohol Test (B.A.T.)” He growled. “I need someone to man Demand Processing since he will be in jail.” Terry lowered the boom on me. “I know you worked today, but I can’t get a hold of anybody else.”

(Translation: Nobody was stupid enough to answer his or her phone.)

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” I told him already angry with myself for answering the phone. I left a scribbled note for Justin and got into my Dodge Ram with four-wheel drive. When I got into my pick up, I saw the snow was starting to stick, but I didn’t think anything of it since it seemed it was always snowing.

It was ten miles from our trailer to the Supply Building on the Flight Line. As I drove the snow began to fall harder. Looking in my rearview mirror, I noticed that the snow was filling in the tracks left by my tires. My headlights reflecting on the snow that was now falling very heavily. Even in my heavy truck, my tires skidded a bit when I tried to turn right to get on the road to Supply. When I got to the parking lot there was almost ten inches of new fallen snow obliterating it. If it wasn’t for the mounds of snow on the cars parked there, I would never have found it.

Putting my truck into four-wheel drive, I had no difficulty parking my truck, but the snow was falling even harder.

To anyone who has never lived in a place where it can snow three or four feet in a twenty-four-hour period, it is hard to believe, but the base was surrounded by the world’s largest fresh water lake that usually can produce its own weather system.

When I walked into the building, I was greeted by Lieutenant Folley, “Sarge, I need you to take out the snowblower into the parking lot.”

“Yessir.” I answered and went into the storage room to take the snowblower to the parking lot. I filled it with gasoline and started it up on the sidewalk in front of the building. There was a foot of snow on the sidewalk by the time I began to push the snowblower. In five minutes, I had cleared off the sidewalk and was moving slowly toward the parking lot.

When I looked behind me, the path I had cleared with the blower had filled in already and you could not see the path I had cleared. As I continued, I found my labor was useless as the snow I cleared had filled in with the falling snow.

Watching the snow fall was a very peaceful feeling for me. It seemed the world had gone to sleep and there was nothing buy silence as the snow fell. I shut off the machine and walked it back inside the storage area.

“Is my car cleared?” Lt. Folley asked with his winter coat on ready to drive home.

“Sir, I cannot get the snow cleared fast enough.” I reported.

He stood at the door and watched the snow fall with me.

“I see.” He swallowed hard. “Well, I’m going to give it a try anyway.”

“Good luck, sir.”

“I’ll see you soon.” He put his hat on and left. In less than five feet from the building, I could no longer see him.

I went into Demand Processing where the mechanics ordered parts to fix the aircraft. We were open and available twenty-four-seven as it were. On KI Sawyer at the time we flew B-52 bombers and KC-135 refuelers. The base also had an alert pad where two bombers were ready at a minute’s notice to take off if a call came in from the DEW Line.

In the office, we had a radio directly connected to the mechanics on the flight line working on the bombers and refuelers. I turned the radio on, but there was nothing but static.

“Hey, why don’t we send some of the guys home?” I heard a voice through the static.

“Sure, we’ll keep a skeleton crew just in case.” Another voice sounded.

“Do you really think we can get a plane off the runway in this stuff?” The first voice sounded.

“Probably not.” The second voice sounded, “Start sending them home.”

I did no know at the time, these would be the last voice I would hear over the radio for the next three days.

“What’s up?” Denny Piccaroni wandered into the office from the warehouse, “I thought Rick was on tonight?”

“He got hit with a DUI.” I shook my head.

“Does not surprise me.” Denny sat in one of the chairs in his shabby uniform. Since very few officers haunted the building during the night hours, a lot of the guys manning the building did not really feel a need to keep their uniforms looking sharp.

“What’s it look like outside?” I asked since they kept the shipping dock door open most of the time.

“I closed the door. Snow was piling up back there.” He shook his head.

“So, the snow is still coming down?”

“Heavier than ever.” He grinned.

Suddenly the phone rang. Both of us were startled.

Hello…” I picked it up.

“Hey Sarge, the base commander is shutting down all the roads.” Terry told me.

“What? How am I gonna get home?” I was more than a bit irked.

“You’re not.” He answered.

“What the heck?” I wanted to scream.

“It’s luck of the draw.” Terry said, “Sorry.”

“Rick was supposed to be here.” I fumed, “Next time I see him, I’m gonna wring his scrawny neck.”

“Not if I get to him first.” Terry chuckled, “You have a good night. Keep safe. See you when I can.”

“Greeeeeaaaatttttt.” I hissed.

“What’s up?”

“They’ve closed the base to all vehicular traffic.” I told Denny.

“That sucks.” He closed his eyes and shook his head.

“They’ll have the roads cleared by tomorrow.” I nodded.

Sleeping on a hard cement floor cover by cheap carpet was nearly impossible. Sometime silence can really mess with your mind, but the furnace would rumble from time to time and help rock me to sleep. I woke up with an ache worse that any hang-over I’ve ever had. Denny had fallen asleep on the counter where the phones were for mechanics would call in needed parts for the planes.

I walked to the front door. What I saw could not be described in rational terms. It was so unbelievable, I went back to my office and woke Denny.

“Whaaat the hell?” He groaned.

“You’ve gotta come have a look at this.” I pointed toward the front door.

“This had better be good.” He yawned and followed me, “Holy crap, are you kidding me?”

The front door to the building was made of glass, but neither of us could see through it because the snow was piled all the way up to the top.

“How do we get out? I’m getting kinda hungry.” I shrugged.

“I’ll check the dock.” He ran into the warehouse as I followed him. “The dock is clear.”

The flightline chow hall was serving boxed meals, so we both got one from the bored looking cook behind the counter. I finished mine walking back to the building that was just two blocks away, but trudging through the waist high snow was challenging.

The snow kept falling, but it was not as heavy as the previous day when it seemed as if it would never stop. I sat on the dock and watched it fall. While the snow wasn’t falling as hard as the night before, the wind continued to make driving g impossible. As the day wore on, it was clear we’d be spending another night in the building. The radio in my office was silent and none of the phones rang all day. We had no television, and the radio stations were not broadcasting any sort of entertainment. The only deck of cards I could find were in Terry’s desk, but the deck was missing more than a few cards. My hatred for Rick grew and grew.

Still with nothing to do, I sat on the dock and watched the snow fall on the silent white world below. I wondered how Justin was getting by, so I called him from one of the phones.

“Hey Justin, how are you doing?” I asked.

“I could not get out of the front door this morning. I had a couple of the guys help me clear off the snow.” I yawned so I knew he was sitting on the couch watching television. I began to hate him too. “You take care. I’ll see ya tomorrow.”

He hung up the phone. Was I that boring to him? I began to think I was. Even Denny stopped hanging around my office. I found myself alone. The snow was still piled up against the door. How long would it take for six feet of snow to melt. Instead of sheep I began counting snowflakes to fall asleep, but that didn’t help either.

Sometime during the night, it quit snowing, but the cold wind continued to blow while I slept.

I woke up from a nightmare where a crazy psycho killer was murdering everyone in the building-both of us. We had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Denny screamed as the maniac slashed him. My eyes fluttered open. I had no way of knowing what time it was. No one ever thought to put windows in this dull cement bunker-like building except the front door which I could not see through.

Wandering the halls of the building through some of the offices, hoping to find something interesting, but there was nothing to be found. I wandered back to the dock where Denny sat looking up at the sky.

“Have you ever noticed how blue the sky is after a snowfall?” He turned and asked. “It’s about as beautiful as it gets, don’t you think?”

“I guess.” I sat next to him.

“I know it sucks being stuck here with nothing to do, but in a way it’s pretty awesome seeing how quiet the world is when a storm is over.”

He was right. There we sat like the only people left in the world watching the brilliant blue sky overhead.

“Do you think they will let us go home tomorrow?” I asked.

“I don’t know. There sure is a lot of snow out there.” He sighed, “If we do we do, but if not that’s okay, too.”

He was right again.

We walked down to the in-flight chow hall and got our boxed dinners and ate on the dock with Denny as the sunset turned the sky to silver as the last rays reflected off of the snow.

“Do you remember that Gordon Lightfoot song about the Edmund Fitzgerald?” He asked as he ate his dinner.

“Yeah, I remember.” I nodded.

“It’s a true story, ya know.” He continued.

“So, I heard.”

“Do you also know that the last place that seen that ship before she went down was the harbor master in Marquette just down the road?” He asked.

“No, I didn’t.” I answered.

“My dad was a merchant marine a while ago.” He sighed, “When I told him I was stationed up here, he told me the story of the twenty-nine men who died out there in that lake. He knew a couple of them. It makes a big difference when someone you know is involved with something like that. Otherwise it’s just another story or song someone else is singing.”

“You are right yet again.” I chuckled.

“All this time you thought I was just another dumb material handler, didn’t ya?” He laughed.

So, I spent my third night on the hard floor after spending an hour on my back counting the holes in the hanging ceiling tiles. Suddenly I heard the voice of Gordon Lightfoot singing the saga of the Edmund Fitzgerald and I fell fast asleep.

“Wake up, Sarge. They’re coming.” Denny shook me.

“What?” I sat up clearing the sleep webs out of my head.

“They called. They are sending a vehicle over to pick up.” Denny said.

“Really?” I got excited. “We’re being rescued?”

“According to the call I just got.” He nodded.

When I skipped into the hall, I saw the door was still over three quarters blocked by the snow.

“They are coming to the dock.” He hustled back to the warehouse with me hot on his heels.

Twenty minutes later we saw a slow-moving tread vehicle plowing through the snow. It felt warner as the snow was beginning to melt.

“Are you the guys who need a ride?” The female driver asked us through opened the door of her vehicle.

“We are the ones.” I affirmed. Denny jumped in and I followed him.

“We have the personnel from the supply building.” She spoke into her hand-held radio. She turned to us, “Is there anyone else?”

“No ma’am.” I shook my head.

“Alright, let’s get you guys home.” She put the vehicle into gear as we lurched forward.

“I live in the barracks.” Denny spoke up.

“And I live in the trailer park.” I told her.

“Ack, that will be quite a drive in this tin can.” She said, “But I’ll gecha there.”

“I don’t mind.” I said.

“You have a great day, Sarge.” Denny waved as she opened the door in front of the barracks.

“You too.” I wanted to thank him for taking my mind off my desperate situation that really wasn’t that desperate at all. I watched him struggle to get the barracks door open so he could get inside.

“Quite a storm huh?” The driver said as we rolled down the empty streets at ten mile per hour.

“Sure was.” I admitted.

“Bet you you’re glad to be on your way home, huh?” She shifting gears.

“You bet.” I nodded.

It’s St. Patrick’s Day.” She smiled “And I’m Irish. Gonna have a green beer.”

“I’d settle for a good night’s sleep.” I chuckled.

“I’ll bet.”

I sat back and let the hurky-jerky motion lull me into a mindless state. I had lost track of time and had no idea it was St. Patrick’s Day. There would be no celebration for me, just grateful to finally make it home.

I slept for over ten hours and when I woke up, most of the snow had already melted away.