This is the time of the year when the temperature in Hawaii sometimes drops into the 50s or 60s and we tell each other it was “freezing” last night.
Of course, I can never tell my friends on the mainland about how cold it is in Hawaii because they think I’m just a lightweight (they’re right). “It’s 20 F here,” they say!
Unheated pool
Several friends and I went to Mammoth Lakes, Calif., in 1972. It was winter and snow was on the ground, but the condo had a big hot tub next to a pool.
Some of my friends would get out of the 100-degree hot tub, jump into the unheated pool, which was probably 50 degrees colder, and then run back screaming to the hot tub. I thought they were nuts. But on the last day I decided to try it.
I dived into the pool and don’t think I moved a muscle until my momentum brought me to the surface. It felt like every cell in my body was sending an SOS to my brain asking, What the hell is going on?
I scrambled out of the pool and back to the nice, warm hot tub. That was over 50 years ago, and I have no desire to repeat that experiment.
I asked readers whether they had any cold-weather stories. Here are a few of their stories.
Hung up
Barbara Dittrich said, “One frosty, cold winter day in Hawaii, many years ago, I called my sister, who lives in New Jersey.
“I was going on and on about the sweater and long pants and socks that I was wearing and was still shivering in this frigid weather. It was in the high 60s.
“She had no sympathy for me,” Dittrich said, “and just hung up!”
47 degrees
North Shore photographer Bill Romerhaus said, “Here’s a weather story that may be hard to believe. In the early 1970s I lived in a beach house at Laniakea, on Oahu’s North Shore.
“One of the coldest days I ever remember was in January. I got up about an hour before sunrise to check the surf and went down by the shoreline with a super-accurate darkroom thermometer. It measured 47 degrees Fahrenheit.
“I also remember going to Leilehua High School in Wahiawa, and some mornings while waiting for the school bus, you could see your breath and it looked like there could be frost on the ground.”
Cold in Kula
Michael Lilly said, “It’s been down to 41 F this winter here in Kula, and today the high is only 63, which is still darn cold.
“The coldest we’ve had it at our 3,600-foot elevation home has been 37 F when we had frost on the slopes of our yard. When we walked on the grass, it crinkled from the ice crystals.
“But that pales in comparison to my mother-in-law’s house a week ago in Iowa at minus 23 F with wind chill.”
Parking the car
“I moved to Chicago in 1963,” Tony Saifuku told me, “and I shared an apartment on the North Side with a friend who had a ’53 Ford. When it rains and the temperature drops quickly, all wet surfaces get coated with ice. Buildings, roads, sidewalks, trees, everything, gets covered with slippery ice.
“During one of these ice storms, we were driving around looking for a parking space after work, and the only one available was too tight to parallel-park correctly. It was late, we were cold and got tired of driving around looking for a big enough space to park, so we took what we could find.
“We lined up the Ford in the tight space between the two cars and pushed. We slid the Ford to the curb with little effort and inches to spare between the bumpers of the two parked cars, and went upstairs to get out of the cold.
“With the crown (high point) in the center of the road, we would not have been able to push the car away from the curb to the center of the road. Fortunately, the next morning one of the cars was gone, and we were able to get out without a problem.”
Muh face id fwozen!
Peggy Aurand said, “When we lived in Pekin, Ill., in the 1970s and ’80s, we had a 30-by-100-foot pole barn with 17 horses in it. Our water line was buried 5-1/2 feet deep.
“One year, for the entire month of January, the temperatures didn’t go above freezing. The frost line went down six feet! Our waterline to the barn was frozen solid and, on days when it was minus 20 F, a 5-gallon bucket of water carried from the house would freeze solid before I could get it to the barn!
“The horses had icicles on their nose whiskers. All were covered with blankets. I had to put hot water in the buckets so the horses had a chance to drink! That’s 170 gallons carried from the bathtub at the far end of the house to the barn per day. By weight it’s over 1,300 pounds.
“When the 17 horses pooped, it would freeze solid before hitting the ground! The ‘road apples’ would clatter as I raked them up!
“The phone in the tack room rang. It was my comfortable, warm parents in Honolulu. ‘Aloha!’ They chorused happily.
“I answered, ‘Uh-woh-huh t’ yoo, too.’
“They asked, ‘What’s the matter with your voice?’
“‘Muh face id fwozen!’ I answered.”
Snowed in … in August
Ken Goldstein had a cold-weather story. “My wife and I grew up in Phoenix, and were both hired by the U.S. Department of Energy in Laramie, Wyo.
“Going from 1,000 to 7,200 feet above sea level was tiring at first, but we were young in the late 1970s.
“The real shock was getting snowed in, in August! It was still in the 100s in Arizona, and we really weren’t prepared for the low 20s. What we thought were warm jackets were useless, not to mention our shoes.
“Linda and I were embarrassed to find that our bosses had a betting pool on when the ‘desert rats’ would realize that we were underdressed!
“We also discovered that our trusty diesel VW was almost impossible to start, and although the town is small enough to walk around, we bought a 1954 Chevy pickup that we drove everywhere for the next three years.
“When my 10-year-old son came to visit for Christmas, I had to borrow my neighbor’s snowmobile to pick him up from the airport, thanks to the nearly three feet of snow that had fallen!
“The runway was cleared, but the roads were still unplowed at that early hour. He and I downed a big pot of hot chocolate when we got home!
“It was hard to realize that the cold could be deadly. We often had temperatures in the minus-40s, with howling mountain winds that put wind chills down to below minus 60.
“There were mandatory monthly health briefings on how to treat frostbite, the right way to dress in layers and other cold-weather topics, all of which were eye-openers to us.
“We loved the hunting and fishing, and the scenery was gorgeous, but we were happy when our next assignment was somewhere much warmer: New Orleans!”
Machu Picchu
John McCarthy commented, “In my college days a buddy and I traveled to Peru, flying into the Andes to see Machu Picchu and other fabulous relics of the Inca empire. One night we attended a meeting until 9 or 10 at night.
“When we stepped out of that cozy room into the icy blackness at 10,000 feet, I was the coldest I’ve ever been. At the same time, I looked up and saw how many stars there really are, when you’re far away from city lights.
“I was stunned, both by the cold and by the incredible beauty of the heavens. I hope to see all those stars again.”
Readers: What’s your cold-weather story?
Bob Sigall is the author of the five “The Companies We Keep” books. Contact him at Sigall@Yahoo.com or sign up for his free email newsletter at RearviewMirrorInsider.com.
