By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune columnist
The air temps have me shivering these days. The other day while walking the three quarter-mile loop in my neighborhood, I quickened my pace to get back to the house and warmth. It was cold.
The uncomfortable feeling brought back some childhood memories of winter.
My dad didn’t avoid going outdoors because of frigid temperatures. When at home from his job during winter in the 1960s, relaxing in our Claryville abode’s living room usually wasn’t his first option, and that meant that my brother, Mike, and me were expected to be out of the house and with him, even if it was only for the reason of “piddling.” That was Dad’s catch-all word for doing small, odd jobs. You know, the “catch up” kinds of things.
Dad’s answer to anyone complaining about being cold was always: “Ya need to put on more clothes.”
Sometimes, the piddling activities I mentioned took place around or in our detached garage, a football pass away from our house. The wood-framed garage that sat on the site burned to the ground the first year after moving from Grant’s Lick to Claryville, I’m guessing in 1963.
Somewhere, I have a picture or two of a trailer carrying burnt wood and ashes from the site—in the dead of winter. I’m not sure where we got the tractor to pull the trailer because our small Farmall Cub perished in the fire. I do remember helping load what seemed like an inexhaustible supply of sooty residue onto the trailer while tackling temperatures at least as low as the 20s. Cold times.
“Ya need to put on more clothes,” Dad would say.
I was about ten years old and would have preferred spending my Saturday mornings watching reruns of Fury or Sky King. Mom wouldn’t intervene on my behalf, however; feeling sorry for oneself was not allowed in the Flairty home. Brrr . . . move on.
Dad, with little skilled help from me, though perhaps some with Mike, built the garage back on-site, this time out of concrete blocks. That meant we, but mostly Dad, again had a place to work on the “new” used Farmall Cub or other needed piddling things — especially in the low temps of winter. The garage, not well-insulated, was also nippy, though Dad usually had a small gas stove going and, in moments I stole when not handing dad a tool or the like, I stood maybe eight inches away from the heat. Almost always, it got to the point of burning the backs of my pant legs, behind the shins, and I inched away.
And the smell — the stench of burnt fabric… that, I’ll not forget. But it was worth it to get warm. Cold is cold.
“Ya need to put on more clothes,” Dad would say.
And at that time of raging goose pimples (raging hormones would come later, tsk, tsk), our house was chilly, especially after getting out of bed. I have vivid memories of Mom getting Mike and me up for school on those winter morns, 6:30 a.m., and I made a beeline to squat down near the open oven door in the kitchen. And now that I think about it, being cold as a child probably is what drove me to start drinking coffee so early in life — before I was a teen. It’s now a lifetime habit I’ve never broken — mainly because I’d rather not.
Today, living in a big house of about 3800 square feet, there is much space to heat. The heating bill can get pricey, so I watch the thermostat carefully, leaving it a bit cooler than my wife likes. Suzanne never met a space heater she didn’t like, and sometimes we exchange those looks of mock disgust. And then I say to her: “Ya need to put on more clothes.”
But though I know dad would be proud of me, he’s NOT the one spending time in the doghouse.
Stay warm, y’all.