When my mom started the Ocean Beach Youth Group on Fire Island, and it rained, she would gather all the kids into the community house (that doubled as the movie theater). She would hire Tina Hess, a lovely lady with a British accent, to read to the assembled crowd.
One favorite story involved a day that was so hot, all the characters would say the same thing: “It’s just too hot,” which, with Tina’s accent, would sound like, “It’s just tooo hot.” The kids thought that was funny and would howl when she over-pronounced the words.
I think about that a lot during one of the coldest times we’ve experienced in the Berkshires since we got here full time in 1971 and it was really “just tooo cold.” There we were in Alford, in a house that had virtually no insulation in the walls. When the wind blew, you knew it. I bought this three-way home heating system which ran on oil, coal, and wood. The problem was that you had to take the ashes out. Sometimes a live ember or two would fall on the floor of that wonderful old house and make a permanent burn mark that I am sure is still there today. How that house didn’t burn down I will never know.
Living down the road was one great gentleman, John Dunn, who was both a civil servant in the New York bureaucracy and a farmer. We did not have a garage at our house and because, as I remember it, the temperature actually reached somewhere around 20 degrees below zero, we had to take extraordinary measures to get our cars going in the morning. I would put an electronic dipstick in the spot where you measure the oil and then, because that didn’t do the trick by itself, I would put a light bulb under the hood. Even then, sometimes the car wouldn’t start and I would have to hitch a ride with my neighbor, who would get me over to Albany. I remember that long passed man with incredible fondness. We would talk about national, state, and local politics and while I think he respected my position as a SUNY professor at the time, I knew how bright he was. I truly miss those conversations.
Years passed and we moved into a bigger house in Great Barrington proper with, incredibly, a garage. When a lovely woman moved into the house across the street, I advised her to build a garage. She hasn’t done that for a good reason, but since the 1970s, I can’t remember this cold a winter. When you start seeing single digits and below-zero signs on your thermometer, you know you will be feeling pain. Now we get our heat from fuel that flows under the sidewalks. I’d hate to be a heating repair person who gets calls about broken furnaces in a house surrounded by sub-zero air. If you’ve ever been in a freezing house, you know how frustrating and dangerous it can be.
I have to believe the AAA and other automobile emergency people are out in force doing their incredible work. If there’s one thing I can tell you, it’s that you really don’t want to be stuck in a car in a snowstorm with no food or water or, worst of all, with a child in the car with you. So, make sure that you keep provisions in your car for such an emergency.
Then, too, there is the matter of tires. There are some things in this world that you really don’t want to skimp on and at the top of that list is tires. You can always get a flat, but knowing you have first rate tires is worth a lot.
To sum it all up: “It’s just tooo cold!”
