My wife and I lived in a small cottage that belonged to my parents for
the first 2 years that we were married.
It was a lovely spot overlooking Lake of the Woods and I wish we still
owned it. I encouraged my mother to sell it after my father passed away
and now I wonder why I did that.
In any event, there was a hill that one had to climb to get into our
yard. It climbed maybe 30 feet in maybe 200 feet. It was ok in the
summer. It was a bit of a minimal road when we started living there but
I got some gravel hauled in and we widened it a bit and filled the holes
and flattened the ridges a bit.
Winter was a bit of a different story. The turn at the bottom of the
hill off of the more main road was a ninety degree angle and it was not
possible to carry much speed into the turn without ending up in the snow
bank on the left side of the road. My primary daily driver, work truck,
was a 1967 Chevy short box two wheel drive pickup truck with a 250 cid
inline 6 and a 3 speed manual tranny with column shifter. No synchro
into low gear. It did not have the ability to turn the corner and start
up the hill in 2nd so I would have to shift down into low on the turn
and double clutch to do so. I won't claim I was ever very good at doing so.
We spent 2 winters there. One of them was not a problem as my father had
a small dozer that was not being used elsewhere and I had it there all
winter. I could plow down to the gravel if I wanted to and I could drag
a vehicle up the hill on a chain behind the dozer if I needed to.
The other winter was a bit of a pain. I can recall coming home more than
once in the dark and having to leave a vehicle on the hill part way up
because I could not get all the way up to the yard. That always left us
wondering if the vehicle would start in the morning as we then could not
plug in the block heater. I can also recall my young wife and I out
there shovelling off the whole hill and part of the yard. We must have
been tougher then than we are now.
About the time that we lived there, from August of 1973 through to
September of 1975, was the time that fuel prices went way up and there
were shortages and line ups in the USA. I swapped my 68 Cougar for a 74
Chevy Vega. Not the best choice in retrospect but I had a better
experience with the Vega than many folks did. The Vega had about 2
inches of ground clearance so it was not really built to travel in much
snow.
Randy
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