ВО «Свобода», CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, listens yet again as the keeper revisits his mile and one-half walk to the one-room country school with his sister Norma on the warm day in March when the towering snowbanks suddenly turned into flooding torrents, one of which swept across the road and blocked the route home.
Enter neighboring bachelor farmer Herman Schranz, with his tall rubber boots, to give piggyback rides to the keeper and Norma through the rushing water to the home side of the flood.
It was a simple act of human kindness, forgotten long ago by everyone except the keeper and his sister. And it comes to the fore now as the snow melts on a warm March day; and sadly, the keeper’s wonderful childhood flood-memory is tainted when kindly Herman becomes cruel Putin in storm trooper boots unbelievably killing stranded children with artillery.
