Morning Thanks--a roaring furnace

The only means by which the boys up in the attic could gauge the temperature on those bone-chilling mornings was by checking the thickness of the frost was on the nails protruding from the ceiling. Warn't no insulation up there, just a holiday chorus of frosty nails--thicker the frost, uglier the temps. You took your life in your hands by running down those steep stairs before pulling on your clothes. Doggone it, it was cold.

A man named A. J. Boersma told me how it was to wake up in an uninsulated attic, some kind of thick comforter pulled right up to your nose, the brick or iron or stone at the set bottom of the bed sunk, by morning, to room temps. You honestly hated to leave, he said.

Theirs was a rented place farm not far from the Big Sioux, just south of Canton. Could have been anywhere close. They were an immigrant family, almost destitute when they arrived, happy to take a shot at a new life in a new country.

Fifty years before the Boersmas, early 1870s, there were no protruding nails because there was nothing to nail down. Sod houses had plenty of insulation--the walls were a foot thick. It's hard to imagine Dutch mothers tolerating their children growing up in all that dirt, but if you'd like to keep out the wind and cold, a sod house is as good an idea as any. Just can't mop the floor. It's dirt--mud, although frozen solid mostly in winter. No matter. Nobody I know grew nostalgic about their days in the soddie, especially mid-winter.

Before that, the Yankton Sioux would have had to make sure the sides of the tipi were pulled down all the way, stones like watermelons keeping the hides tight and sealed. How anybody could live through the kind of howler we'll have going today is really hard to imagine. Likely as not those tipis were somewhere along the river where there'd be trees would keep off the wind if you didn't cut 'em all down to keep warm. Temps in the bottom of the basement, north winds whipping in with sirens blazing--doesn't matter how many buffalo hides you can crawl into and under in that tipi, I'd rather not try.

This morning, here we are--

Wind chills approaching minus 40. This morning, I'm greatly thankful to hear the furnace roaring. In a while, I'll go upstairs and light the fireplace. We're out in the country here, those terrifying winds as alive as neighbors, but when you imagine how it's been out here in some other eras, you can't help but give thanks for our blessed accomodations. We're blessed.

You too?