In a winter sometime between 1937 and 1940 two snow-covered men of early middle age knocked on the door of the farm home where I lived with my parents and younger sister. They said their car was stalled in drifts on the state highway in front of our farm and asked for shelter until the storm abated. They were employees of an organization active in agriculture. My father acceded to their request since we had an unoccupied bedroom and enough space to avoid crowding.
Their arrival certainly changed our family routine for a couple days. We spent the time telling about ourselves and speculating if we happened to know the same people in the area. This happened so long ago that few memories of the encounter remain. Those that do are pleasant and were the cause of laughter in the immediately ensuing years when details of the visit were still fresh. Fairness demands that I say that these two genial guys probably commented and laughed about these middle-aged parents and their barely teenage children.
It is doubtful if such an encounter would take place today. For one thing, snow removal is faster and more effective, and distrust of strangers is common.
These unsolicited guests remind me of the hilarious 1942 movie, The Man Who Came to Dinner” with Monty Woolley, Ann Sheridan and Jimmy Durante. The major details are quite different as Woolley was an invited guest who broke a hip and recuperated in the host’s house. The reader is asked to excuse this paragraph, a departure from the snowy theme, but fits the subject of house guests.
