BREAKFAST ON THE FARM

BREAKFAST ON THE FARM

It was a warm April morning in Omaha, Nebraska, back in 1982, with the temperature reaching 80 degrees

at noon. But by 6 p.m., when management informed us that a bank had failed in Humboldt, Iowa, and we

needed to drive there immediately, a cold front had begun settling in.

I volunteered to take several members of the closing team in my van. We left Omaha about 8:00 that

evening, and by then the wind had become very cold. By 2:00 the next morning, we were in a raging snow

blizzard and decided to pull off the road when we saw several 50-gallon barrels blowing down the highway.

309 (Anecdotes)

I turned into a farmyard and pulled behind the granary to get out of the wind. We thought that when the sun

came up, the wind would die down. But we were too cold to wait for the sun! About 5 a.m., we beat on

the farmhouse door until the farmer answered and let us in. We then discovered that another car had pulled

into the farmyard for shelter and we helped these people into the house. The wind was blowing so hard that

it knocked some of us down.

The farmer’s wife made breakfast for everyone, and afterward many in the group lay on the floor to get

some sleep. It quit snowing about 10 that morning. Around noon, we saw a grader clearing the highway,

so I ran out and arranged for the farmer’s driveway to be cleared for $10. We each tried to give the

farmer’s family $5, but they wouldn’t take it. They finally agreed to take $30 to donate to their church.

Our group left about 2:00 that afternoon for Fort Dodge, Iowa (where our motel was located), and arrived

about 4 p.m.—20 hours after we began our adventure!

--Kate McDermott