Thor's Day November 21st, 2019

Sven heard the front door make a noise, something that is noticeable where they live. He wondered if it was the UPS man as they deliver in rural areas until about seven or eight in the evenings. Deliveries were amping up around there as Christmas draws ever closer, it’s not uncommon to see UPS or Fed-Ex trucks now. Monique went to the door soon after the noise, opening it just as Sven said,
“Yoo-pee-ess, Ehefrau?”

She didn’t answer.
“Yoo-pee-ess, l' épouse?” he asked again, thinking she didn’t hear him, quite.

“‘Épouse, épouse, épouse, partenaire - et ce mot-là, je ne le répéterai pas!?” she answered Sven with her back to him, her concentration riveted on the crushed LTD boxes the delivery person delivered in apparent haste. “La compagne: compagnon, épouse, camarade de classe. peut-être,” she hissed, adding snippily, “Jamais, le mot S!”

 Evening deliveries to the remotest corners of Palmville and other densely unpopulated areas of northwest Minnesota, including rural Torfin, are places delivery folk don’t want to be in at night where their cellphones lose signal and wolfish red eyes hungrily leer at them from along lonely highways and unmown gravel road shoulders.

Sven and Monique’s driveway is half their winding farm lane and half township ‘dead-end’ road, a road that has deterred any number of curiosity seekers, suddenly derailed drunken high school lads (not Sven), created heartache and stress for invaders who have contended with him ordering them to back-up! the same way they’ve come in, thinking they would be permitted to turn around in their yard. Fools! Schoolbus drivers retired when they learned Sven’s daughter had become school age, learning about what they would contend with on “Mikinaak Road,” a harrowing Grand Canyon trail-edge road high above the angry roiling waters of Mikinaak Creek.

So it was tonight, la compagne hollered down to Sven dutifully tapping away on his keyboard compiling township board meeting minutes for Thursday November 21, 2019,
“Mon amie! Le camion UPS est coincé dans la cour! J'ai peur qu'il frappe nos voitures! Il est hors de contrôle!”

All Sven could make out over all the fan noise that cooled his beer set in front of the open window behind him was “The UPS truck is stuck! I’m afraid he will hit my car!”

Notedly, Monique had said, “My car," not ‘our cars’ fearing, after all the money they had invested in their old collector cars this year; her car was the gold-colored, almost perfect condition 2000 Saturn station wagon with less than 150k on it--and Sven’s, a 1998 Subear-u wagon, in very good shape as well, with less than 92k on it, and, the 1995 GMC van in their stable with less than 180k on it, that the UPS driver would lose control of his van and collide with all three.

So Sven got up and went up the steps to see what Monique was all excited about, just as the tail-end of the bigger-than average rural delivery UPS truck swung wildly northward, pivoting on its westbound front wheels, and narrowing missing the highly-treasured wood picnic table, built by Sven and his grandson, Uric, by only eight feet, then promptly getting re-stuck again in the wet four-inch snowfall they had been treated to since its beginning at two-thirty that afternoon.

Sven was surprised at its rapid accumulation as he had returned from his deerstand north of the house hardly an hour earlier when it didn’t seem that deep, but he had concluded these were obviously city-drivers who know no speed other than ‘fast’ and ‘drive like hell.’

Monique, wringing her hands and jumping side-to-side (for some reason) urged Sven to get his boots on and see if he could help the UPS driver get unstuck, before he buried his truck in their yard, hit the basketball hoop stand on the edge of the driveway, crashed headlong into the old birch tree, or swerved out of control into the ditch.

Sven was not amused as he was very ‘into’ township board minute transcription and was just getting a handle on the gist of the meeting concerning pocket gopher trapping methodology and proper trap setting techniques; damn all them UPS drivers who couldn’t get their bald-assed tires up a slight incline in his yard so he could finish his business! “Why aren’t they better prepared for winter than this?” he grumbled, hopping on one leg to pull his knee-high boot up on the other. He grabbed his camouflaged hoodie off a nail in his basement, ensuring it had gloves in both pockets, grabbed a cap off a hook near the door on his way out, and opened the door to the outdoors and a UPS driver muttering under his breath a dozen feet away.

 “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep."

Sven’s driveway is inclined upward from near the house to the gravel farm lane. The past several days had been warm for November and the apron there of snowpack from earlier snows had not melted all away right where the UPS truck could really utilize it in its ascent to the road. The wet snow added to the height the truck had to go and the fact the truck tires were hot from all their spinning, made them relatively useless. The driver, was a getting stuck periodically veteran, but even so was unsure of how to accomplish the task at hand, and as a last resort had pulled out his regulation UPS tire  traction pads. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxnwAkMh9U8 which, although inapplicable in this situation, is an alternative they could’ve employed--if they were dealing with beach sand, for instance. Oh well.

All this tire spinning and transmission gear changing stifled Sven, who finally inquired of the frustrated UPS driver, “Trenger du et trekk? Jeg kan starte Toyota-pickupen min der og trekke deg bakover der du kan få bedre trekkraft.”

“Uffdah yes! By all means,” answered the UPS driver. “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep. By the way, my name is Robert. Robert Frost.”

“Robert Frost? Bor du i Malung Township? Kjenner du Mitch Johnson?” Sven asked, excitedly, wondering if Bob Frost, who he had just met, did indeed know the son of the ‘father of Polaris snowmobiles fame’ or was just an acquaintance of the Mitch Johnson who worked for the Cenex station in Badger.

“Ja, jeg kjenner Mitchell. Selger han ikke ekstraordinære baneenheter for fritidskjøretøy?” Bob answered.

“The very same,” said Sven, grinning from ear to ear. “Hva med at vi skal komme deg ut herfra, eh. Du vil ikke kjøre denne veien. Hold deg inne i sporene dine.”

Sven walked to his old 1986 Toyota 4x4 truck buried under the new snow. He swept the snow from the driver’s side of the windshield and opened the driver’s door. Turning the key in the ignition, he pumped the fuel pedal a few times as he turned the ignition key, the little engine rapidly turning over, attempting to start ... then finally firing, like days of old. It started just about the time, the UPS truck gained some traction and was able to edge up the hill to the head of the road.

 The driver was out of the panel truck in a second, uttering his mantra, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep,” and hurriedly gathered up his traction pads he said he had used three times already that night.

“Yah, den store lastebilen din var flau over å vite at min lille lastebil skulle dra den ut, det var derfor den beveget seg!” Sven laughed, shaking hands with the driver who had extended his, in appreciation.

“Sikkert, helt sikkert!” answered the UPS driver. “ Takk igjen! Ser deg neste gang!” and up the road he went, staying on the truck tracks he made driving into Sven and Monique’s farm. But just in case, Sven threw the 30-foot chain in the back of the truck cleared the windshield on his old Toyota 4x4 and drove the length of the farm lane to make sure he didn’t slide into the ditch.