After a foot of snow buried Daleville, Ind., last week, friends, family and near neighbors were happy to see Jerry Lambert and his massive homemade snow-removal rig on roads south of town.
Accustomed to doing whatever needs to be done, Lambert, an owner of JL Fabrication, said folks come out and snap pictures when he blows by in a contraption he devised two years ago.
The 1981 Daleville graduate mounted a huge snow blower on top of some mid-1960s farm equipment originally designed to chop rows of corn and hay for silage. Instead of filling a hopper with mulched feed for animals, the harvester now moves the unwanted mountains of snow to be blasted far off the roads.
"The wind doesn't stop blowing at night, and lots of people don't realize just how bad it gets outside of towns," Lambert said.
One of the nearby neighbors who depends on Jerry's largesse is his mother, Marlene Lambert, who has a particular need to stay mobile.
"I had a chemo appointment on Thursday, my first after a year and a half -- my second go-around," Marlene said. "And I had a hip replaced in October, so this has been a year when I needed to be able to get out and get around.
"Jerry was hoping he would not have to get (the snow blower) out this year. But it is amazing, and I wish everyone could see it."
Drifts
The giant contraption looks like innocent farm equipment until it starts moving -- and begins to blow snow.
On Jan. 30, after a windy day before, Lambert was clearing 900-W again. Walnut, the main street through Daleville, is just another county road south of town, south of Ind. 67 toward where Lambert and his longtime lady friend Tammy Swords live. Lambert's shop sits behind his home, where his grandfather once lived, on land Jerry now farms himself.
"South of town, our road is nice until you get past a couple of houses," said Swords. "People do need to get out, and it's Jerry's way of being a help."
The pair planned to swoop under Interstate 69 and on over to Swords' father's home along the Delaware-Madison County Line Road (1000-W).
The couple had also meant to clear a problem intersection southeast of his home, but Swords said a delivery truck became stuck at the site before they could arrive. Lambert did, however, pull a couple of stuck cars from ditches elsewhere.
Lambert and a couple of employees work at JL near the century-old farmhouse sitting among open fields that looked more like tundra after last week's storm. A welder and fabricator at ABB for a dozen years, Lambert opened his shop about nine years ago after the transformer plant shut down.