A Yankee Notebook
NUMBER 1956
January 14, 2019
Cold Noses, Warm Memories
EAST MONTPELIER, VT – We’re finally getting some winter. It may be nothing like what my friend Larry up in Kugluktuk gets – he had -40º Celsius the other day, and if you know your tables, that’s the same as -40º Fahrenheit – and it may be nothing like what we old-timers remember sixty years ago, but it’ll do. The snow cover that we’ve had for two months now ensures that we’re reflecting the sun’s heat, rather than absorbing it; yet there are tiny hints that the sun is coming back: icicles falling off the southside eaves and a tiny band of exposed gravel right in front of the doors that absorb the reflection off the east-facing garage.
It’s easy to wax nostalgic for the winters of yore without an accompanying sense of unease about what’s happening to our planet’s climate. The change has occurred slowly, though in geological terms precipitately. And I suppose that as we age and become less well equipped to cope with the rigors of bone-chilling cold, we find it easier to accept the ominous difference. The young people don’t miss it because they’ve never known what we had. To them, zero is pretty cold.
No, forty below is cold, and sixty years ago thirty below was cold enough to get our attention. My venerable 1946 Plymouth flathead six had a compression ratio of only 5:1, and turned over pretty easily even in the coldest weather. But the battery was only 6-volt, and often expired during the night. So it was de rigueur to remove it and take it into the warm house till morning. I kept a spanner of the right size handy on the front floor to make the removal (usually in the icy dark) quicker. By spring, the front of my jeans was rotted away (like the jeans you see today in the malls) from the sulfuric acid in the battery.
A neighbor – luckily, not next door – had a Ford Fairlane, and boasted 12 volts, which worked much better in subzero temperatures. Unfortunately, his compression ratio was up around 8:1, and his V-8 needed an electric block heater to keep it supple on bad nights. Lacking that, he shoved a two-burner Coleman stove under the car early one morning and went back inside to finish his coffee. Returning, he found that a slight gasoline leak had done for him, his day, and his Fairlane.
But there were bright spots to the cold weather. The most obvious was the sun; the coldest days, just like this one as I’m writing, were the clearest, the snow a blinding white from roadside to mountaintop. The traction was good beneath both foot and tire. And working outdoors, we could stay dry all day. Rubber boots with lots of insulation, union suits, bloused Malone pants, layers of wool (down was just coming in, and Polarfleece not yet thought of), hats with earflaps, and cowhide choppers with wool liners – that, along with keeping moving, was all we needed to be happy and warm. It was when we got home and indoors that we realized how frosty our extremities were; and if my wife had lit the water heater before I got there, a hot bath put the cap on a lovely day and coated the tiny bathroom window with frost.
The grimmest winters I can recall were those of 1958, when I was living alone and unemployed in a second-floor apartment with a leaky roof; and 1960, when my new bride and I were sharing the same flat and, like the government workers in the current shameful shutdown, waiting for my check. I was working at the Lake Placid bobsled run, operated by the State of New York, which didn’t pay till the end of the third week of employment. We had no money to speak of, and very little food. But my mother had given us a carton of elderly hamburger buns and another of canned baked beans. So for three weeks I opened my black metal lunch box to a one-pint thermos of warm water and a stale hamburger bun full of cold beans.
Meanwhile, straddling a nearby sawhorse, Harold Parker, a man who knew how to enjoy cold weather if anyone ever did, opened his, to discover meat-and-cheese sandwiches and pickles individually wrapped in waxed paper, a thermos of hot coffee with sweetened condensed milk, a wide-mouthed thermos of steaming soup, a couple of chocolate chip cookies, a soup spoon, a serviette, and a toothpick. I vowed at the time that, if I lived long enough, I’d someday reach Harold’s exalted walking boss stature and dine on similar delicacies in the comfort of the machine shop and the company of rough old guys.
Well, I did live long enough, but my path diverged from Harold’s. But I do still love these clear, cold midwinter days – perhaps even more because I don’t have to get out in them all day anymore. Instead of lunches like Harold’s, I have salads (fiber taking the place of exercise) and try to stave off Kiki’s importunities till it’s time to sally forth into the cold for our daily hike in the park. She seems to love it even more than I do, and with two forepaws spread on the snow in front of her, back end in the air and tail waving, invites every dog she meets to play with her. These past few cold days, though, she’s taken to walking on three legs, alternating the one off the snow, to really comic effect. But the slightest diversion – just as working did for us in the cold old days – makes her forget it all and just enjoy being alive in winter.
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