Skeptics! That’s what I’ve produced. Generations of skeptics. I try telling my children and now my grandchildren how we muddled through life and their eyes roll up in concert with with a look of almost pained disbelief. It’s almost as if they’re blurting out, “Oh no, here we go again!”

Fortunately they’re courteous. They quickly mask their appearance and settle down to humor the old man but I notice. You’d think I was telling tall tales or something. Take the winter of ‘68 for example. Sure we had to walk 10 miles to work in a bitingly cold blizzard (uphill both ways) and it was so cold that when the fog froze we had to use a pick ax to tunnel our way out but I didn’t tell them about that. I couldn’t because it was so cold that words of ‘68 froze in midair. The words are still frozen in our freezer and I don’t dare edit them. Building a fire to thaw them would release some words that are perhaps unsuitable to children.

I’ve got a good mind to keep my stories to myself but then I see those angelic faces so innocent and trusting and relent. They deserve to know the truth and the truth of the winter of 1968 is pretty incredible without any exaggeration. That is, it’s pretty incredible to me but Grandma Oddball is less impressed. She’s from Minnesota and when it comes to cold those Minnesotans are hardy. I never had tires that were frozen overnight with a flat spot so that the car went bumpity, bumity, bump as it rolled down the road nor did I worry about frozen tires shattering when you hit a dip or obstruction in the road.

You see I’m from metropolitan sunny California and was totally unprepared for living in Idaho. Initially the transition wasn’t too bad. Northwestern Idaho stands at the edge of Palouse country where the weather is normally relatively mild. Sure it snowed in winter but the snow seldom lasted for more than a few weeks and the temperature didn’t dip below freezing (32 degrees Fahrenheit) very often. After awhile I got acclimated to the change.

However, acclimation took some time and we had to endure a few trials first. Being poor we rented some WWII housing. Boy those WWII people were hardy too. The “walls” looked like inch and a half thick cardboard. When the wind blew we could feel the breeze through the walls! And during winter the cold radiated off the walls like an arctic gale. Heavy sweaters, thick blankets, and warm pajamas were among the necessities of life.

Our “house” was heated by an oil guzzler located in the floor. It had only one floor vent covered with a grate for warm air to heat us. We took turns standing over that vent in winter in order to get warm. Grandma Oddball especially loved standing there with the warm air blowing up through her nightgown making her all toasty and warm (and hogging all the heat I might add). Forty years later we still have the grate pattern burned into our feet. As soon as we could afford it we upgraded to a duplex.

However eventually I did acclimate or so I thought. In fact with the low humidity I even got so cocky as to walk around in t-shirts and shorts during winter. Then reality hit with the arrival of the winter of ‘68.

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Tags: family, Humor

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 9:21 am and is filed under Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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