Senior Connections Senior Connections Apr 2019 | Page 6

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 • Video Inspection & Location • Maintenance Agreements home from school, only to • Commercial, Residential, & Farm • Hydro Jetting learn the Twins lost game seven on a 2-0 shutout. • Environmentally Safe Products Math problem FAST, Sometimes there are little Call Genie Drain Cleaning today! EFFECTIVE, things that just set one off. on a snowy week- Your drain and sewer specialists SERVICE end Back in February, there was a segment on Good Morning ������������������������������� 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