Thinking about old-time winters
Well, we didn’t have that White Christmas this year. The snow that fell a few days before Christmas nearly all melted away before Christmas Day.
Of course, if you allow that there are Twelve Days of Christmas, from Dec. 25 to Jan. 6, then there still is a chance that some of our Christmas might be white. But, it seems that most people who observe Christmas think of Christmas as beginning about Thanksgiving time and ending with Dec. 25.
People’s season of Christmas shopping may begin at Thanksgiving, and all kinds of preparations may go on getting ready for Christmas, but it is sad, I think, to think that Christmas is over and done at the end of Christmas day. That’s when the festival begins. I’m glad to see that some of the neighbors who have their houses trimmed with Christmas lights are still keeping the cheerful lights on, even after Christmas day!
I’m keeping the Christmas tree up until Jan. 6. The Christmas presents may all be opened, and the wrapping papers may all be discarded or stashed away, but Christmas is not over. There are still some days to remember, to appreciate, and to celebrate the Christ child’s coming into the world. From time to time, I enjoy thinking back to Christmases in the old days. The “old days” of course is a relative concept, and what I remember as the old days may not seem that old to others who go back further in time than I do.
Today, so many of our Christmas toys and gadgets are electric, or battery powered. I think of the old days as back in the time when our motion toys were wind-up toys, spring powered. You wound them up, released the catch, and they would go and go, all with the hum and the occasional clash of their roughly fitted gear cogs.
The old days were back when our music players were spring-powered, with wind-up handles on the sides. They would play on until the spring tension diminished, and the spinning disk turned slower and slower. Then you wound the handle again to tighten the mainspring, and the music or the talking would speed up to normal again.
I don’t remember our old-time winters as being particularly colder or more severe than our winters today. Winters in Northwest Arkansas have always been variable in their intensity. Some winters are hardly winters at all; little snow may fall; only occasionally will the temperatures fall below freezing for any length of time. Other winters much more severe with cold and snow and sleet and ice and wind.
I recall the winter of 1983 as particularly severe. That winter was a trial for our Northwest Arkansas farmers because the farm ponds froze over, sometimes with ice cover 2 to 3 feet thick. Keeping water available for the livestock under such cold conditions was a constant care and a challenging task. In some cases, the coming of our new technologies added to the burden of winter tasks. For example, when electricity came to the farms in the 1940s, most of us installed running water systems, with hot and cold running water in our houses, and with at least cold water pipes to the barns, chicken houses and cattle pens. Those great labor-saving conveniences also gave us new jobs to do in winter. Now we had to take steps to prevent pipes from freezing, or to thaw them out when they did freeze.
When they froze, not only were we without the needed waterflow, but quite often the frozen faucet would crack and break from the expanding pressure of the ice, and when it thawed out we had water spraying everywhere. Fixing busted pipes and faucets is no fun in freezing weather. The growing popularity of farm tractors and gas powered vehicles was wonderful progress in many ways, but since nearly all the engines were (and still are) watercooled, keeping them going through the winter cold involves strategies to avoid freeze-ups. Freeze-ups can result in a disastrous and expensive cracked engine block, or a ruined radiator, or at the least can cause delays and extra work.
Bundling up, i.e. dressing for being out in the cold was always a part of winter on the farm. Today, I find myself dressing lightly, even in winter, because for the most part I don’t need to stay long outside. I am out, then soon back inside. I am in the car, into the post office, back to the car, into the store, back in the car; never out in the cold and wind for very long. On the farm one sometimes needs to be out and to stay out, working until the chores are done and the necessary tasks are finished. On the farm I usually went for many layers of clothes.
In really cold weather, I might have on three pairs of socks inside my shoes and galoshes over those, maybe two pairs of jeans, along with long johns, two or three shirts, a thick sweater and a wind-resistant jacket over all. That’s bundling up!
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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge and can be contacted by email at joe369@centurytel. net, or call 621-1621. The opinions expressed are those of the author.