Fog

It was extremely foggy when I went for my walk this morning and that made me think about other fog experiences. Three times stand out.

In 1976, when we were on our way back from Nova Scotia, driving down I 81 past Scranton and all the way to Harrisburg, the fog was so thick that you could hardly see 50 feet in front of the car. It took hours and hours at 15 to 20 miles per hour to get from the northern Pennsylvania line to Harrisburg. Most of the time I followed a semi, staying back far enough to just see his brake lights.

In April of 1957, I had been out visiting my future spouse and had started the 25 miles home at about 1:00 am. It took me until 5:00 am to travel the 25 miles because the fog was that thick. My brother-in-law was coming up the road in front of his house from the other direction. And I stopped to see what he was doing in this fog. He said that he was coming home from the Hospital. My sister had had a daughter about 1:00 and he was just getting back to do the milking.

In September of 1954 I was doing the milking on the farm. One morning I got up at 5:00 am to go down to the barn. When I looked out, all I could see was a little spot of light in the fog, from the light on the pole down by the road. I went down to the milk house and got the milkers ready and then went over to the barn. Usually the cows would come up out of the pasture field when they heard me moving about in the barn, but this morning they didn't come. I stared down through the field to fined them but the fog was so thick and it was so dark that I was walking blind. I really couldn't see one step in front of me. I could tell by the slope of the land that I was not near the creek at the bottom of the field. When the land flattened out I knew I had about 75 feet to the stream but I still couldn't see any cows, so I took about 10 more steps and fell headlong over a big brown swiss cow. I was there in the middle of the herd and couldn't see them. The cows had all been laying down and they didn't move until I fell. That cause enough commotion that they got up and I could hear them but still could only see the one I fell over because I was standing right beside it. Once they got up, they walked up to the barn and I walked along with them.