In 500... (or less)

The Blizzard of 1950

Milton groaned as his wife hollered at him to go down to the springhouse and fetch some water.

"I'll do it later," he replied. "I'm busy."

Being busy could be a million different things to him, almost none of which involved him doing much of anything. In this instance, he was watching his two sons struggle with the heavily-laden coal buckets. It was his job to bring the coal over to the stove, but if his wife was out of sight, he'd always pawn it off on the boys.

For him, it was a matter of pragmatism. If he left to draw the water from the springhouse, he couldn't be near the boys to swipe the buckets from their hands and make it look like he was doing it.

"Did you go out and feed the animals?" his wife yelled. 

"Not yet," he said. "Been busy with the coal. I can only do so many things!"

Now he had a choice between equally annoying jobs: go to the barn and sling hay at the cows and horses, or haul several buckets of water up the small hill to the house from the spring. 

"I wish I'd just put in the plumbing," he grumbled. He reasoned that in 1950 there were still a few houses without running water. He saw no reason why his house couldn't be one of them.

He burst out of his chair as he heard his wife approaching, wrenching the buckets of coal from his children and quickly sitting them next to the stove. He dumped one out, rubbed some of the coal dust on himself and set a new record for cleaning it all up.

"Can you just go out and get the water?" his wife pleaded. "I need to do some laundry."

He peered out the window to look at the springhouse.

"It's a blizzard out there!" He wasn't even aware that it had been snowed. "I can't go out in this!"

"Well, I need water to cook your dinner too," his wife reminded him. "So bundle up."

Of course he didn't listen, he grudgingly put his coat on. No hat, no gloves. 

The door didn't open the way he expected it to, there was nearly two feet of snow piled on the ground.

"Good grief!" he said to himself. He trudged along through the deep snow. It was hard and slow work. The worst kind of work.

He stumbled into the springhouse, half-hoping the water from the spring had frozen. No luck, the shelter was packed in straw and kept things just warm enough to keep the water bubbling from the ground from freezing.

Milton dipped the buckets into the water then plodded against the fierce wind back to the house.

He was just about to the door when he heard a tremendous crash. A huge plume of snow rose up from the ground where his barn once stood.

His wife was waiting at the door.

"Well, Milton, looks like your laziness has paid off for once," she said. "If you'd done your chores, you would have been out in that barn feeding the animals like I asked."