Morning Thanks--Staying warm*

Outside, the winter darkness isn't darkness at all. Our new carpet of snow is a bright, moonlit stage against the inky sky. But it's stinking cold out there--six or seven degrees, windchill of -8. Tomorrow night will be colder, twelve degrees colder, in fact, and that's not counting wind.

An old man, now gone, once told me that when he was a boy, his read of temperature out here was the gauge the thickness of the frost on roofing nails coming in from the un-insulated ceiling in the upstairs bedroom of his parents' farm home, where he and all the boys slept. If he'd look up and see those nails were perfectly white, he said, the temp was unbearable.

And I know the special design of a teepee facilitated a good roaring fire within. Sure, I get that. What's more, I'm guessing buffalo hides were fully as good as fleece or feathers-- probably better; still, in winters like this out here in Siouxland, in these bargain-basement temps, I just can't imagine what it would be like to live just on the river bank out back in that kind of mobile home.

In the 19th century and even halfway into the 20th, people took warm bricks into unheated upstairs bedrooms. My wife claims that on the farm when she was a girl, she made sure that she got dressed for school downstairs, not up where she slept beneath a sea of quilts. Back then most folks wore all-over suits of woolish long underwear--maybe the kind with the cubby hole, an access hatch. 

Speaking of drop seats and union suits, in freezing temps like this it's just as hard for me to imagine using an outdoor john as it is a chamber pot. Seriously? You did what had to be done outside in wind like this, in temps this cold? Good night, we owe a great deal to Mr. Thomas Crapper, the Englishman oft credited for inventing the toilet, a great deal for sure.

For years I wanted some kind of tanned buffalo hide, a kind of emblem of the region. Really. But right now, outside, even though the dark land looks almost regal adorned as it is in alabaster, I don't know that a buffalo hide would even help much. You know, it's so cold that Grandpa's teeth were chattering--in the glass beside the bed! It's just plain bitter cold. Bitter, bitter, bitter.

What I know is this: there's pure joy in running upstairs about 15 minutes early at night and punching a couple of buttons so the dial reads "PH" on the controls right there at the bedside. This unreasonably cold winter morning, I'm thankful for a ton of blessings--roof insulation, a hearty furnace, this hoody I'm wearing, fuzzy house slippers and, for sure, indoor plumbing--and the almost sinful comfort of a pre-warmed bed.

This morning I'm thankful for the electric blanket. Beats a buffalo any day.

----------------------------------------

*An earlier version of this post appeared here on January 20, 2011.