Cold Weather Comes Knocking

Cold weather has arrived in our neck of the woods, the intense type of chill that hurts your face when you step outside. The mere act of going outdoors feels like being slapped.

I grew up in the shadow of the Cold War wherein we worried about being turned into human French fries by Russian nukes. A more immediate concern was our War on Cold, which took place from October through April and involved worrying about becoming human popsicles. 

Warm clothing is our frontline defense in the War on Cold. This means layering up, starting with undergarments. As cold weather arrived when I was a kid, I was put into a jumpsuit-type of thermal underwear, a onesie that had a trapdoor in the back. The trapdoor could be challenging to open; you had to plan ahead when it came to bathroom issues.

Once you became acclimated to your thermal underwear, you were loath to take it off. When forced to do so for my weekly bath, I felt naked. I was naked of course, but it somehow seemed beyond that, as if I’d been skinned. There was no greater relief than the feel of reinstalling your thermal underwear as soon as you had dried off after your bath.

Martin, our Norwegian bachelor farmer neighbor, took his thermal underwear one step further. He never removed his long johns, even during the scorching summer months. His theory, which he passionately expounded upon, was that thermal underwear wicks away the sweat, cooling the skin faster than if it were bare.

If you ever stood downwind from Martin, you got the idea that there was a simpler explanation. Never taking off his long johns meant never taking a bath. At least that’s how it smelled.

Nowadays, electrically heated clothing – including nose warmers – can keep you as toasty as a midsummer afternoon. This seems like cheating. Plus, in order to stay warm, you have to lug around as many batteries as a Tesla Cybertruck.

When I was a youngster the ultimate weapon in our War on Cold was Dad’s sheepskin coat.

Long enough to cover a grown man from ears to ankles, the sheepskin coat weighed approximately 50 pounds. Just wrestling the thing on and walking around in it could make you work up a sweat.

True to its description, this cumbersome monstrosity was made entirely of tanned sheep hides. The coat was constructed in such a way that its wool side was facing inward, toward the wearer. The sheepskin’s original owners must have had things backwards.

We had livestock to care for – a small herd of dairy cows along with some steers and a dozen hogs – so the advent of cold weather meant battling with ice.

All of our animals needed to drink, and all of their water was extracted from a well via a greasy old pumpjack. The pumpjack was driven by a small electric motor that had sufficient power during the summertime. But this wasn’t the case in subzero weather, when the oil in the pumpjack’s gearbox took on the consistency of chocolate pudding.

On cold winter mornings we would plug in the pumpjack’s motor and listen to it whine and groan. We would try to help things along by pulling on the pumpjack’s arms while whining and groaning. But this task would prove too much for the motor and its internal circuit breaker would bring things to a halt with a strident click. We then had to stand there in the cold and wait for the circuit breaker to cool.

The water was pumped into a 300-gallon wooden tank. Our War on Cold extended to the water tank, which would have frozen solid without military intervention.

Our counteroffensive strategy involved a steel contraption that had a slanted chute on one end and a stovepipe on the other. This doohickey sat in the tank and was heated with fire.

There are few things more attractive to a boy than fire. I learned that corn cobs blaze hot and fast while unseasoned firewood burns slow and cold. This led to lessons regarding liquid accelerants, often resulting in the loss of knuckle hair and/ or eyebrows.

Our farm now has a pressurized water system; the cattle fountain is heated with electricity and requires no attention.  

Beneath our cattle yard’s fence is the ancient steel tank heater that my Grandpa Nelson once used. It’s exactly like the one we had when I was a kid. It’s just a rusty hunk of scrap, but I’m loath to get rid of it.

Because looking at it brings back warm memories of the “whoosh!” of an over-accelerated fire and sheepishly explaining to my parents why I didn’t have any eyebrows.

Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy” can be found at www.workman.com and in bookstores nationwide.