All I want for Christmas is a little warm weather
By Bill Thompson
Some folks think that to really catch the Christmas spirit we need to have cold weather. Well, as Sportin’ Life says in “Porgy and Bess”:“It ain’t necessarily so.”
The main thing I catch from cold weather is a cold, the sneezing, wheezing, coughing kind. Although my doctor tells me we don’t catch a cold because of the cold weather, I don’t believe him. He says the cold is a virus we catch from other people; that it is passed person to person. I look at that kind of like the chicken and the egg. Somebody had to catch it first from something, and my money’s on cold, wet weather.
It can be difficult to summon the Christmas spirit in cold weather. One thing that is not conducive to a merry season is the effect on water pipes. I know that frozen water pipes are not a factor for many people, particularly those who have city water and insulation. But for people like me who live in old houses out in the country, frozen pipes are a fact of life.
It is hard to be jolly and joyful when you can’t get the shower to work or even get enough water to fill a basin to wash or shave your face. I know it sounds incongruous for me to be complaining about the lack of modern conveniences, since I am always extolling the virtues of the past. However, in those olden days, not having the convenience of a shower was something you more easily could predict before you went to bed and could, therefore, make adequate arrangements for your ablutions.
If, by luck, you are able to make yourself presentable to the public without water in the house, you must face the challenge of getting from the door of the house, across the porch, down the steps and to your car. I have heard that in Minnesota (a place of forbidding cold and icy mornings) folks can just push a remote control button and their cars will start automatically and everything will be nice and warm and ready to go when the driver gets to the car. (I know. We can buy such conveniences down here, too, but, unfortunately, I didn’t think about that when I bought my car in the middle of a Carolina summer.)
I don’t even have a garage or carport at my house. My car sits outside all night accumulating frost and/or ice on the windshield. That means that after I have negotiated my way from the door of my house, across the slick porch and down the slippery steps, I have to scrape the windshield and start the car and give the motor enough time to warm up and give the heater time to, at least, take the chill off the car seat.
Scraping the ice off the windshield with a putty knife is not a good idea. It takes a long time to clear ice with an instrument that is only one inch wide, and there is a good chance that you will put permanent scratches on the glass. Somebody told me a shortcut to getting the ice off the windshield was to turn on the windshield wipers and throw a glass of water on the windshield while the blades are moving. That is not a good idea. First of all, windshield wiper blades are made of rubber and they stick to the icy glass, allowing the arm to detach itself and scrape its steel edge across the glass. Secondly, the only thing the water does is clear the frost away, leaving a film of ice which, though transparent, still hinders a clear vision of the road and creates a blinding glare if the sun is shining. Of course, the main reason I don’t do the water thing is my pipes are frozen; I don’t have any water.
Fortunately, the Christmas spirit, which, like a cold, I do seem to catch year after year, is warm enough to overcome even the chilliest weather. Merry Christmas.
Bill Thompson is a frequent — and wise — contributor to Salt magazine.
