A stretch of bad weather, and a case of bad math
Dale Kovar
HJ GENERAL MANAGER
In my eighth year in the land of Hale Township during the
reign of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the forces of nature deter-
mined that it was time.
I was still a boy, but it was time to become . . . a hardened
Minnesotan, a winter survivor.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell if I remember an actual event or
just the pictures from it.
According to online research, I am thinking of the St.
Patrick’s Day blizzard of 1965. It was the third of four ma-
jor storms in February and March that year, and besides the
diffi culty it created, that much snow set the stage for major
fl ooding that spring.
At our rural home, the blizzard left such a huge drift that I
was able to step over the telephone wire. (The younger people
are asking “What’s a telephone wire?”)
At least I think it was a telephone wire. Hopefully my par-
ents didn’t let me hop, skip, and jump over an electric line.
I know there was a photo of it but I haven’t been able to
fi nd it.
I also remember – not from a photo – that at the edge of
that large drift was an old Chevy, parked and not used for the
winter.
It was mostly buried under snow but I was able to get into it
from the passenger side, and it made a great fort for a 7-year-
old to play in. Either the keys were left in it or somehow I was
able to even listen to the radio, at least until the battery died.
In the spring, after all that snow, came the fl ooding.
Our driveway was about a quarter-mile, and during wet
periods it was common to have several inches of water from
fl ooded fi elds run across the driveway. Farm tiling wasn’t
anything like it is today. Most of the time we simply drove
through it.
But 1965 was extreme. I did fi nd the photo of my uncle
with his car stuck.
When fl ooding got to be too much, we had to leave cars
1965: I couldn’t fi nd the photo of a snow drift high enough to walk over the telephone line, but did fi nd one with
the resulting spring fl ooding.
parked out on the township road and hike about a half-mile
through the woods to get home or out.
And after a snowy March and wet April, the spring of 1965
didn’t get much better.
In May, six tornadoes went through the area from Glen-
coe to Chanhassen, including demolishing St. Peter Lutheran
Church and School in Lester Prairie.
We were northwest of that so I don’t personally recall the
tornado day, just the history accounts of it.
1965 wasn’t a total loss, though. That fall, it was the fi rst
time the Twins made it to the World Series, facing the LA
Dodgers with Sandy Koufax
and Don Drysdale.
I don’t recall games being
available on tv, or at least I
don’t remember watching.
In those days, all the
games were played during
the day. I do remember the
disappointment of coming
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home from school, only to
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learn the Twins lost game
seven on a 2-0 shutout.
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Math problem
FAST,
Sometimes there are little
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on a snowy week-
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SERVICE end Back
in February, there was a
segment on Good Morning
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America about the recom-
mended amount of protein
everyone should consume.
Dr. Jennifer Ashton pre-
www.geniedrains.com
sented a formula to cal-
W ish it A w ay
by C alling To day
(320) 587-4110
6
Senior
Connections April 2019
culate that. Divide your
weight by 2.2, the mul-
Snowiest
tiply that number by 0.8
months in
to determine the number
of grams of protein you
Minnesota
should have each day.
Nov. 1991
46.9”
I instantly recognized
Jan. 1982
46.4”
that as being overly com-
Mar. 1950
40.0”
plicated, and grabbed a
pen and scratch paper to
Feb. 2019
38.9”
make sure I was right (I
Mar.
1965
37.1”
was). Then I headed to
Mar. 1985
36.8”
the computer and started a
small spreadsheet to test a
Jan. 1967
35.3”
few examples to confi rm I
Dec. 2010
33.6”
was right (I still was).
Dec.
1969
33.2”
Instead of that formula,
just divide your weight
Jan. 1999
33.1”
by 2.75 and you’ll get the
same answer.
For people who are nu-
tritionally negligent, they’re probably not going to want to do
a lot of math about changing something they may not care
much about anyway.
But to pick on Dr. Ashton a bit, I could come up with only
three possible reasons why she would offer that formula up
on national tv:
• it was intentionally made more complicated than neces-
sary to make her appear as an expert.
• she knows nutrition but is lousy at math and didn’t realize
it could be simplifi ed.
• somebody else prepared the information and she was just
reading it.
Again, it was a pretty minor thing, but when you’re snowed
in for a weekend, it’s easy to become a media critic.
Senior Connections HJ.COM