As usual, the weather forecasters have erred on the side of panic, and our thirty-six-hour blizzard with fifty mile per hour winds, zero visibility, and a half inch of ice under nine inches of snow has turned out to be a rime and an inch. They did get the wind right. In Iowa, a sustained high wind is called a derecho. In Western Kansas, we call it Tuesday. Or Sunday. Today it is a Sunday.

Yesterday, in preparation for being stuck in the house all day, I put out extra feed, checked waterers, and generally battened down the hatches. In the house, we dug out candles, realized the bulb is dead in the battery lantern, and stocked the fridge with leftovers. Today, I plan to read, maybe do a little house cleaning if I get really desperately bored, possibly bake. But, cabin fever will probably overtake me in late afternoon when the wind fades and the sun peeks through. It will be a quick trip because the temperatures are expected to dip sub-zero by tomorrow morning.

As the British say, “There is no such thing as bad weather. Only inappropriate clothing.”

When I was in college, Dad and I were preparing to work calves one crisp morning. He told me to calibrate the scale. I climbed inside the chute. The scale read 172. Dad groaned and said we better diagnose the problem before the vet arrived. I said the number was probably accurate. Dad said, “You weigh 120.”

I said, “I weigh 120 in a shirt and jeans. But right now, I’m wearing six shirts, two sweatshirts, my winter coat, long johns, jeans, my insulated coveralls, your old insulated coveralls, insulated gloves, and insulated boots.”

He asked if I was warm enough. My reply: All but my fingers.

Dad often swapped gloves with me for a few minutes. His hands were like toasters. They were also a little larger than mine, so his gloves were vats of superheated air. He would cram his hands into my gloves and frown. “How can you make the inside of a glove so cold, Freddie?”

Freddie? Yes, that was what Dad called me to his dying day. Why? Because I’m a writer. I’ve always been a writer. When I was three, he would say, “Get to bed, Nishi.”

And I would say, “I’m not Nishi. I’m Nicky the Horse.”

So, he would say, “Get to bed, Nicky the Horse.”

And I would say, “Now I’m Little Joe the Horse.”

He finally barked, “Get to bed, Fred.”

In my teens, one of Dad’s buddies changed it to Freddie, and it has stuck forevermore. When I return to Southwest Iowa, I am still Freddie.

As a kid, I didn’t have an imaginary friend. I had a whole bunkhouse full of them. Later, they became the Stondt Brothers and the Wellers who populate the stories Pathologically Shy, Someone Else’s Rain, Foster’s Story, Clod, Big Claus, and not Quite Forgotten, among others.