If any of you dear (or other woodland-type) readers don’t feel it’s cold enough for you, I suggest you read “To Build a Fire,” a short story by Jack London. Your lips will turn blue even if you read it at high noon in the middle of Death Valley on the Fourth of July.
I spent a great majority of my teenage years on my back in the snow under one vehicle or another, repairing leaking brake lines, changing clutches, unlinking floor shift linkages, making snow angels, or just relaxing and sniffing exhaust fumes. Even in my 20s (I was done sniffing exhaust by then), and before I was an independently-wealthy newspaper columnist, I still reveled in the joy of do-it-yourself Winter car repairs. A 1971 Riviera of mine developed a leaky radiator and out on a country road somewhere it overheated. I had a jug of water that I dumped in, figuring I’d add antifreeze later. Once I was warm at home, I thought, “eh.” It was just too cold to mess with.
That night the temperature hit zero and in the morning my radiator was a giant brass popsicle. With no garage and the temperature forecast to be in the teens for the next week, I was pretty well stuck in frozen radiator hell. But then I had a brilliant idea, even more brilliant than the one of not adding antifreeze when I had the chance. Using my meager supply of tools and my numb hands, I pulled out the radiator, took it in the house, placed it in the bathtub and gave it a nice warm bath. It was a special surprise for my wife when she came home from the neighbor’s and wanted to submerge herself in the tub. My ingenuity paid off, though, and put me back on the road.
A much earlier frozen adventure took place on my first camp out with the Boy Scouts one December, not the perfect time of year for anything but relaying Christmas wishes to Santa. But, hey; I was 11. What did I know? My mother thought I was crazy to go, but I told her we’d be in nice, heated, Condé Nast four-star rated cabins.
When we arrived at the camp, we trudged through snow to the cabins. Even to my prepubescent brain, they looked like they’d been built by an unruly chain-gang as punishment. Inside, beside the wooden bunks and picnic tables, a potbelly, wood-burning, stove stood at each end of the long cabin to provide heat, of which there was none. The experienced boys ran for the bunks at the ends near the stoves, and I was left with a lower bunk in the cabin middle. I even had my own window.
Once the fires were stoked, we had snacks and flopped in our bunks. The bunk-flop lasted until our scout leader walked out the door. An airborne pillow signaled a battle was on. It soon escalated from pillows to backpacks and whatever else wasn’t nailed down and capable of flinging. A backpack came at me and I jumped out of the way. Bad move. It hit my window and smashed it. Snow blew in immediately. This act of accidental vandalism brought the festivities to an end. All the kids hit their bunks, and I was left to cover up this new architectural feature with my shirt.
In the middle of the night, I needed a trip to the boys’ room, an outhouse 50 feet, or so, away in the woods. I slipped on my cold stiff boots, pulled my jacket on over my pajamas, and shivering, headed out in the snow. I slammed the creaking door behind me. About halfway to the wooden wonder, I decided the heck with it, so I settled for a tree before I froze. I crunched back through the snow and found the door had latched when I slammed it and I couldn’t get in. I pounded and pounded while visions of my ending up like a large clump of grubby ice hanging from the underside of a car fender filled my head. An aroused, disgruntled, kid eventually got up and let me in. I kicked off my boots, shook the snow off my blankets, and crawled between them.
When morning came, my window curtain shirt was frozen, just as I was. No one bothered to stoke the fires overnight, and the stoves were as cold as my shirt. I’ll finish by adding we all had to wash outside under a pump. When I got home, I told my mother the camp-out was like a weekend in Bermuda, but I quickly withered under her gaze and spilled the beans, because my nose was running down my face. My mother and a few other mothers blamed their kids’ colds on the camp-out.
Although it was a good experience, I would rather have been out selling Girl Scout cookies and letting the Girl Scouts earn my merit badges.