Worries about winter

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There are two kinds of winter worry: Worry about snow and worry about severe cold. I do both, but severe cold wins the gold medal of fear hands down.

I’ve gotten stuck in the snow, skidded off the road in the snow, and have had to dig myself out of snow. But I’ve never feared for my life the way I have in mind-numbing, bone freezing arctic cold.

When the mercury plunges to single digits and below, the number-one worry is that the water pipes will freeze. My farmhouse in Minnesota was the county champion in the frozen pipe competition. It sat on a hill, and the northwest wind gleefully marched through it from one end to the other.

I became a world-class contender with a propane torch. I also bought more electric pipe wraps from the local hardware store than anyone else in the area.

The second arctic cold worry is that the car won’t start. When I lived in Minnesota, all of my cars had block heaters, some more than one. Sometimes I stuck a hair dryer under the hood and let it run all night for extra protection.

Of course, all this electrical stuff led to the third worry: loss of electricity. When the power went out, frozen pipes and cars became stark realities.

And this led to worry number four: that everyone in the house would freeze, especially if our propane tank ran out and the delivery guy couldn’t bring more because his truck wouldn’t start. Unfortunately, fear of the cold tends to grow exponentially.

Since moving to Indiana, it hasn’t been so bad. We’ve had a frozen pipe or two and once the power went out and we huddled under blankets for a few hours. Mostly my car has always started.

But I keep a hair dryer handy just in case.

 

 


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