Sparrow In the Snow

They called it "the storm of the century." It was my first year of sobriety--1975. We lived in the tiny village of Borup in northwestern Minnesota, in the flat Red River Valley about thirty-five miles northeast of Fargo, North Dakota. It was a cruel storm, sending the entire upper Midwest into dangerous freezing temperatures with record wind chills. Motorists from Wyoming to the Canadian border were stranded in the blowing snow. Cattle froze and died. Several people lost their lives in drifts along highways and Interstates. Everything shut down.