This is an excerpt from a conversation overheard during my morning coffee at the Kaleva cafe in Hancock after a good snowfall:

"But yeah, I gotta say those flat roofs sure do collect the snow, especially in West Hancock there.. you get the wind coming hard right over the canal and then it slows down as it hits the hill and dumps a buncha snow right on those trailer homes. And those houses are so peckin close together you don't got no place to dump it, either, not to mention no place to plow it. So you basically end up just building these tunnels from your house to your car and keep packin da snow right on top of der bank. Just pank er down, ya know. I heard Mortimer once lost a coupla cows that way. He was clearing snow offa the barn in one of those big storms in the mid 90s and he dumped a huge pile right on top of a coupla heifers. The poor girls were found the next spring, a couple of carcasses frozen right stiff. Cripes."