Sandi Chats

You may recognize the title of this blog as also being the title of a Laura Ingalls Wilder book where Laura describes a winter from her childhood that lasted seven months. This was the winter of 1880-1881 when the Dakota Territory, where the book takes place, was very sparsely settled. The book tells of the hardships of living on the prairie during seven months of blizzards and cold with scant provisions. Yeah, those people were tough!!! We have all heard the stories about the Blizzard of '88 (that's 1888), when many people on the Plains perished due to being caught in a sudden 3-day blizzard. And my folks tell stories from the Blizzards of '49 (that's 1949), which they lived through. How planes dropped provisions to snow-bound residents and how the  "weasels" had to come out and open the roads. The '49 blizzards were a series of blizzards that hit every few days for several weeks, totally paralyzing this area. Fast forward to the current winter that w