OH THE WEATHER OUTSIDE IS FRIGHTFUL

For those of us who watched "Little House on the Prairie" or read books about the brutal North Dakota winters in L. Snelling's books, let me tell you, it is real.

It this modern day world, we don't have to go to bed to be warm. We don't have stories to tell our children about how we cooked on the front side and froze on the back side by the wood stove in the kitchen. There are no buckets of water which froze in the house over night. We didn't go to bed in the attic or loft under mounds of covers to look up at the ceiling and see the frost between the roof boards. We aren't tough, either because we don't have to be.

Will us who live in these northern Minnesota/North Dakota snow banks be slaves to Jack Frost for the winter?

Sarah Berman writes in January of 1930:

"The cold weather has imprisoned me in a cold house with the outside so cold, I have qualms about going out to see Jenny t her home and thaw out. I am affectionate by nature but I rebel against hugging the radiators all day, for even while we get thoroughly baked at bottom we remain raw on top.

No, for hugging purposes I have definitely decided, radiators leave much to be desired. They, again, who has time to be romantic? I have to sit at the phone all morning expatiating the excellencies of the American Jewish World, {it is her job to do phone sales}, and the desires of its presents in every Jewish home regardless of interest, money or brains, or in spite of brains.

All of this keeps me chained to this cold telephone with the chilly drafts from the imperfectly closed doors of the sun room. I am freezing my feet and chilling my ardor."

Note: I think what she may mean by chilling my ardor is the passion to do phone sales while being so cold, as ardor means passion or heat.

Old Trunks hates the howling wind. Our home is warm, there are no drafts but when those big gusts come from the north, northwest, the house shutters as the tempest whips around the corner down the driveway and out into the street.

At least we don't have to go feed stock and unlike the winters of the 1880's, we won't get lost and freeze to death.

Stay warm.

e