World War II was a horrifying ordeal for all who lived or died during those dark days.  Yet, like successful chemo and radiation, it rid the world of a serious cancer.  It also gave the English language a few new, colorful words.  Consider “blibby”, which today’s Google does not know about.   For many years I thought a Mooringsport buddy’s dad made up that word, but Jack West learned it in his WW2 service.  Kurt Vonnegut, the novelist and US Army infantryman, used that term in print.  According to Vonnegut, for southerners the term was “blibby” but Yankee GI’s spoke it as “blivid”.  In either case it’s a noun referring to what one has on his hands when carrying nine pounds of barnyard fertilizer in an eight pound bag.  “A real blibby” ain’t something you want.

Neither is a SNAFU.  If we have any younger readers, you will be pleased to learn this is an acronym whose G-rated translation is:  “Situation Normal:  All Fouled Up.”  Our SNAFU at Camping World ended yesterday after our visit to a still-standing set used in Easy Rider.

Somebody in Camping World’s Service Department asked us why we had camped there for four days.  We told our refrigerator story, and he told us “It came in yesterday morning.”  Parts alibi’d that Receiving didn’t tell them that our part wuz in.  Of course, if Parts cared, they would have asked Receiving.  Friday afternoon we left Camping World emotionally exhausted, with a new ‘frige, bound for a nice little RV park in Williams, AZ, 20 miles closer to The Canyon.  We chose not to go the last 70 miles to The Canyon because the forecast called for two inches of snow Saturday.  There are at least three things you don’t want to do on a snowy road:  1) boondock on dirt, 2) ride a motorcycle, or 3) pull a trailer.

Two inches of snow accumulated long before noon even though the temperature outside was just above 32 degrees.  The sun came out for an hour and the snow melted.  The clouds returned and just before the snowfall resumed came five minutes of buckshot sized hail or the biggest sleet I’ve ever seen.  Technically we are not snow-bound.  As one of our neighbors here told me “You’re from South Dakota; this is nothing to you.”  (We are officially SD citizens, with license plates to prove it.)  I hooked my thumbs into the belt loops of my jeans, and doing my best but still limp John Wayne impersonation, gave him a short course on the intersection of meteorology and towing.  “Well, snow means a lot to me.  Unless I have to, pilgrim, I ain’t gonna pull our rig over ice.  Besides, it hardly ever snows in Shreveport, South Dakota.”