Today’s post comes from the skipper of the pirate ship Muskellunge, Capt’ Billy.
Me an’ th’ boys was quite excited last week when all th’ news channels was besotted with details regarding’ that Russian ship what got caught in th’ ice ’round Antarctica. As professionals in th’ field of immobilizin’ vessels an’ liberatin’ passengers of their valuables, we is always on the outlook few new techniques that could streamline our work! The sight of a ship full of journalists, researchers an’ tourists completely unable to move was, for me boys, like dumpin’ a basket of hot breadsticks in front of a group of pensioners at a buffet.
Now, when it comes to yer types of individuals ya might hope t’ find stranded on a boat, ya can keep yer researchers an’ journalists on account of the fact that they is well known cheapskates. But a boatload of earnest, moneyed, climate-change tourists what can’t move is th’ sort of prize that gets our juices flown’. An’ by the time I joined the conversation, th’ boys had begun to draw up plans to retrofit th’ Muskellunge as an icebreaker, an t’ go chargin’ off in search of some of that frozen polar booty.
‘Twas up to me as Captain t’inject a note of reality into th’ discussion.
“Not t’ pour cold water on yer fine ideas,” I said, “but does any of ya realize that operatin’ comfortably at either one of th’ Earth’s poles requires loads of equipment an’ a level of hardiness that goes far beyond the jolly ‘Har, had, har …’ of yer typical tropical buccaneer?”
I told ’em about all th’ gear they’d need, including thermal skivvies, fleece scarves an’ ear muffs. A pirate is a rather vain creature, an’ none of ’em could picture hisself in such a get-up. When I said they’d have t’ wear all their clothing at th’ same time in order t’ stay comfortable fer this one adventure, an argument broke out about whether a pirate ever should reveal where his secret hiding place is located.
It was a half hour before I could convince ’em I said “layers” an not “lairs”.
I proceeded t’ inform them that human skin freezes in as little as ten minutes when exposed to temperatures in th’ thirty to forty below range. They was unimpressed. But then I told them they could get chilblains. Chilblains occurs when bare skin is exposed to cold water, or when wet flesh cools. As pirates, of course we is never far from water, so one would always have t’ consider it a risk. When a feller gets the chilblains, his skin itches and swells something’ terrible, an’ it can lead to gangrene!
That did the trick. Frostbite don’t sound so bad I guess, but chilblains …? Th’ word itself is too gruesome. They wants no part of it! Their plans t’ set sail fer th’ Antarctic was dropped that very same night an’ we re-committed ourselves t’ bein’ th’ best warm-weather pirates possible.
Let that be a lesson – ya can argue til yer blue in th’ face, but even turnin’ blue in th’ face won’t change minds. But if ya gives somethin’ a properly fearsome an’ somewhat appalling name, people will respect it, an’ learn t’ keep their distance!
Accordingly, t’ keep international law enforcement types away, we’s thinkin’ of re-namin’ the Muskellunge the Cancer Inferno!
Yer salty pal,
Captain Billy
When have you ventured into the cold, unprepared?
Trail Baboon 
Into my bedroom last night – it was 45 degrees. I had to come downstairs to don a hooded jacket and wool socks. It is now an official temp of -22, wind chill -55. All the climate-change deniers are gleefully declaring that this deep freeze “proves” that global warming is a complete hoax. Too bad they haven’t gotten the memo that temps in either extreme are actually evidence of climate change!
LikeLike
My most famous article told the story of my worst experience with cold weather. I assume that anybody who is interested has already read that story, but if you would care to see it you can write me by email at mnstorytelr (at) comcast.net.
But cold weather can get you in so many ways, including by vanity! When I was a kid in junior high I went sledding on a long snowy hill at a nearby country club. This was during a rare bit of bitter cold weather in Iowa. Perhaps 30 kids were sliding down this hill, then dragging their sleds up to do it again. I had a fairly warm hat–a maroon tam-o-shanter knit cap–but there was a cute girl in the group of sledders. I wanted to make an impression on her, so I didn’t pull my cap down. We’d been sliding for hours when somebody told me that my ears looked funny, but I was focused on the cute girl and not my ears.
At the end of the day I discovered that my ears were frozen. They were like porcelain ears: stiff and white, with no sensation at all. They eventually thawed, but for perhaps two decades after this event my ears became early warning devices because they would become stiff and cold before any other part of me.
LikeLike
But was the girl impressed? At the very least I hope your ears tingled whenever she was near!
LikeLike
Rise and Shine Baboons!
Back in my 20’s when I was young and foolish, my wasband, toddler son, and I tried to get to Iowa in a blizzard for a Holiday (must have been Thanksgiving or Christmas). What a mistake. We got stuck somewhere in windy, snowy, flat Iowa at the end of a drivable road with the temperatures near 0 and deep drifts of snow. We had to wait with the other stuck cars until a plow arrived to lead us to somewhere, anywhere with a heater. So there we sat for several hours listening to the wind howl. We always travelled with a cold weather emergency kit–tin can, candle, granola bars, chocolate, matches. This was an opportunity to use this with great effect–the candle, lit in a can does produce a bit of heat, until you have to pee, requiring a very different function from the can. And that is an either/or situation to be certain.
The can works fairly well for that, too, until you overflow it when it all spills onto the car floor. And freezes.
LikeLike
steves story reminded me of my second grade adventure with the sleds of the day. the flexible flyer. we were at the hill and the day was perfect. there was snow and it was such a perfect day the rest of the neighborhood had the same idea. remember the old days when the sledding hill was a community gathering place on winter days. ill bet there were 40 or 50 kids there. i dont remember a single parent just us kids. i went to catholic school and the deal with catholic school is that the bus route is vastly expanded vs the public school where the bus picks up a kid at every corner and usually 5 or 6 at each corner. on a catholic school bus you would pick up 2 kids a brother and a sister then drive 6 or 8 blocks and get 2 more. the bus took more than a half hour to filla nd with drive time there was an hour inversted more or less by the time we got nativity of the blessed virgin mary with all those nuns running around smacking rulers in their palms. on my bus i was toward the begining of the pick up and the end of the drop off list. a little while after me was the stop where the harris kids who were friends and a couple of other families. the valeries were the good italian family who lived 3 doors on the other side of the he sledding hill and the family i cant remember the name of but i remember carol. carol was a 4th grader with a rita hayworth head of hair and pretty face. she got on the bus every day and sat in front so it felt like kind of a tease that i could get a look at her but only for a second and from a distance. at the sledding hill that day i had picked up the harris kids there were 3 or 4 of them dressed and ready to go that day 2nd grade ,1st grade, kindergarden, and maybe another one year younger, they were good at proliferating) we went to the hill and it turns out that the valeries and carol had been by earlier to borrow a sled because they were one short. it was one of the harris’s old ones that got used seldom. we got to the hill and the sledding conditions were perfect. the hill was ideal in that it was just right as far as speed and length. there were other hills that went faster and further but then you had to walk all the way back up with the sled being pulled along on that clothesline rope all matted with snow and ice. this hill was fun to go down and you were back up at the top by the big tree in no time at all. the sledding had been going on for an hour or so and we were having a ball. because of the sled borrowing carol and the valarie girl were screwign around with us and it was my opportunity to get to see carol up close and get to see her laugh and have fun. it was too good to be true. i put my sled down getting ready to jump on from the grand prix start which was the way i liked to do it. walk bacwards 5 or 6 steps and take a flying leap to put you hands on the steering handles your belly on tyhe flexible flyer boards and your feet up toward the sky so they didnt slow you down on that rocketship hurdling toward the earth. well carol (carol of all people) kicked my sled with the bottom of her boot while i was backing up and sent it down the hill without me. i was the perfect customer for her highjinx, i ran down the hill with her laughing and getting a big kick out of her stunt and when i caught my sled before it hit the bottom (they dont steer so good with no on on them) i headed back up to the top of the hill with my sled behind. i saw the two girls go sliding by laughing and waving as they passed. i couldnt resist. i jumped on my sled and followed them to the bottom to bump them off their sled into the snow as they finished their ride. girls dont think about sledding the same way as boys i guess and its not about speed and prjectile like form to propell you to the bottom with the greatest speed they simply sat on the sled put their feet on the steering handles and took the rope like reigns of a horse and went dowen the hill waiting for the ride to be over rather than zig zagging through the maze of bumps the hill in death defying grace. i caught up to them in no time and in going to bump carol off her sled i ran into her just as she hit a bump and sent the nose of her sled into the hill below bring us both to an immeadiate stop. i had on my chocolate milkshake colored parka with the zip on hood in place with a stocking cap for warmth (those hoods were worthless for warmth but worked good at keeping you hat on and providing some insulation for the sweaty hair beneath) as i pulled the sled runner out of my hood carol turned around and her smile was transformed to a look of terror as she screamed “youre gonna have to get stitches” i was not on the same page… was this a repromand for following to close? i must have looked confused because she looked at me and said “that didnt go up your hood it went into your skin” i had my moms big white furry angora mittens on which were not real warm and definitely not high on the fashion chart but they were there by the scarf and mitten bucket as i left that morning and got commandeered. i put the wooly mitt up to the face i couldnt see and pulled it away to discover that thick rich color red you only see with a fresh wound and lots of it. i grabbed my sled and went walking the 3 blocks back home to my dad who hauled me off to the oxboro clinic wher dr phibbs spent 4 or 5 hours sewing me back up. turns out the sled of the 60s all had their runners on the bottom curl back up and reattatch on the back of the sled but the one i ran into must have been an earlier model form the 40’s or 50’s more rosebud era and the runner just came out like a steel shaft to be avoided in just such an instance. i had no idea this was an issue and the sled company had made their changes and moved on. the scar it left was a pretty big one that made me self conscious and provided character for my otherwise run of the mill face. i have other good sledding stories that include stitches from later in life. some people’s kids never learn. i am reminded as we are entering this cold week that cross country skiing is best done at a temperature of -10 degrees. if you ski at 0 you sweat like a pig, – 10 provides me with an icy mustache and no need to unzip and unbutton all the layers ( no lairs) i go out sking in. i wont be going out today but i will before it gets warm again.
LikeLike
I thought you said once that 10 above was perfect, tim, but maybe that was for ice skating?
LikeLike
if you get the ad at the end of the blog where the girl in the blue ski outfit is in the tucked position. watch it.
LikeLike
Having grown up in a place south of here, where winter temps hover in the low 30s and where you are just as likely to get ice as you are to get snow, I don’t have tim and Steve’s childhood sledding memories. But I do remember my very first Holidazzle … in 1994. I’d lived in the Twin Cities for over a decade at that point so I’m not sure why I thought an outdoor parade wouldn’t be cold. But it was. I had on just my coat and gloves. No scarf and no blanket or quilt to sit on or to wrap around my legs. No frostbit or chilblains but suffice it to say that I was very happy to be in the crush of the crowd! The cruelest bit of the evening was that I still had to wait for the bus when it was over.
LikeLike
Good morning. On a very cold day I decided to go for a hike without a hat that covered my ears. I spent a few hours outdoors walking across country on frozen ground. I think I was 18 or 19 years old. When I got back from the hike my ears were very red and there was some swelling. The damage to the skin on my ears was extensive and it took a long time to heal. Since then I have been careful about protectingly my ears from freezing. As Steve has mentioned, it seems ears become more sensitive to cold if they have been damaged by freezing. Mine feel as if they are close to freezing if I don’t keep them covered on a cold day.
LikeLike
Son got frost bite on the tops of his ears in Winnepeg at the corner of Portage and Main, arguably the coldest corner in Canada.
LikeLike
🙂
LikeLike
My father froze his toes as a child, one of his abuse horror stories, and his toes were cold all winter the rest of his life. He had bad problems on the cold ship deck in the Navy because he was not allowed to wear any extra socks. But none of this kept us from logging in the cold.
LikeLike
Daughter has a college friend driving to our home today from Shelby, MT, a 500 mile drive. They will caravan back to college tomorrow. I certainly hope friend is prepared for the worst in case the worst happens on the way here. It is 500 miles of nothing from Shelby to here.
LikeLike
First read this as she was DRIVING a Shelby GT and I thought that was cool but I wondered if the heater was good enough in a Shelby.
Never mind.
LikeLike
Now I hear that there is another college friend arriving with the Shelby girl. This new arrivee was going to take the train from Shelby to Fargo, but the train has been cancelled and she is driving with friend number one.
LikeLike
Safety in numbers. Hope they’re adequately prepared and take their time.
LikeLike
They arrived 45 minutes ago, ate a bunch of pasta, and have fallen into bed.
LikeLike
Polar explorers survived terrible cold and exposure by layering (or liaring afterwards) and keeping active at a regular pace. As I have told before, I spend many long days logging in very cold weather, as much as 30 below. We layered, oh, Louie was the master of layering, and keeping busy at a steady pace, which was also Louie’s forte.. My cheeks were chapped all winter. The best sledding is in the very cold, as dog racers know. We kids went sledding in cold weather.
I do not remember a bad experience out of all that. But Louie had the rule that you did not go out in blowing snow or much wind if it was cold, which is pretty rare where I grew up, or was. Chillblains was a word my mother loved, as a joke. It was years before I knew what it was.
But I could be liaring. But there’ll be no leering in this cold weather.
LikeLike
Morning–
I don’t have any ‘unprepared cold’ stories that I remember.
But I still have a Flexible Flyer sled hanging in the garage. And I have fond memories of sledding down our driveway with that.
Our driveway is mostly downhill and twists and turns ending in a big ‘U’ turn around around the house and down to the barn.
Dad had reshaped parts of the road so it doesn’t work as well as it used too. But in my prime sledding days, I could start up above the house getting a good run and leaping onto the sled to make the first right hand turn (Because if you didn’t make the corner you skidded through the barb wire fence and into the trees or over the cliff–) make that turn and then a 100 yard straight away before hitting the two left hand corners with the first corner being banked so you could rebound off that to get around the second left and then another 100 yards straight down to the barn.
It was wicked cool!
Besides the road reshaping and losing that banked curve, the snow blowers have gotten better and I have more gravel showing now. And when we put manure down for traction that made it more difficult too…
But the memory of those perfect runs probably makes them better every time.
I never had much luck with the rail sled on a regular snow hill.
And I never slid on a scoop shovel either.
LikeLike
How many times did you miss that first right hand turn and go through the barb wire fence?
LikeLike
Haven’t lost anyone through the barb wire fence nor over the cliff by any mode of transportation yet! But I did scare myself in a tractor one icy winter night on that corner.
Divine Providence protected me I believe…
LikeLike
We could start on the road about 300 yards above our house and then curve between the house and garage, past the front of the barn and end up in some balsam trees. Must have been 600 yards or more in all on runnered sleds.
LikeLike
My cottage is so cold that it occurred to me to see where my thermometer was set: 65!! I’ve started the car from my window several times with an electronic device just to warm it up, but do not plan to drive anywhere for a couple of days. Grand Marais is officially the coldest city in the nation right now at -60.
I couldn’t sleep last night out of extreme worry about my nearly 50-year old daughter. She had to arise at 3AM to do about five hours of outdoor horse care. With 93 horses boarded at her ranch, most had to be herded into her indoor riding arena to survive and fights among them can suddenly spring up. My imagination went crazy all night realizing that with just one kick in her direction, she could be laid out among them and freeze to death in minutes. I called her daughter just now and she hasn’t seen her mom yet today so I’m on pins and needles until I hear from her.
LikeLike
That Grand Marais temp has to be with the windchill factored in, right?
LikeLike
Of course!
LikeLike
Once my parents came home to GM on the bus after a trip somewhere or other and the wind was so bad they couldn’t walk up the hill to their house. Turns out the wind chill that night was 100 below zero. Good thing they got a ride.
LikeLike
Makes me wonder why the weather persons are reporting today’s temps as the coldest in recorded history?
LikeLike
Maybe that was before they started recording temps in GM?
Are the temps for today the coldest in recorded history for this date? or for all time?
LikeLike
I know for fact that today’s temps are not all records. On February 2, 1996, the actual (NOT windchill factored in) low temperature measured in Tower, MN was -60º F.
LikeLike
Like Ben, I don’t think I have any unprepared for the cold memories. I grew up in western Iowa where we could get weather like this as an expected thing every winter, along with so much snow, that you would end up driving through a tunnel of it well over the height of the car after the huge plows cut through the drifts. I also remember there was a drift that always formed on the western side of the house that peaked at the bottom of the windows on the upper story of our split level.
Craziest sledding memory is probably riding cafeteria trays down the slope beside Memorial Union at Luther.
They no longer use trays in the caf, IIRC, and I think even that hill has been filled in with new construction. Kids today, they just don’t know what they are missing.
LikeLike
Creative use of those trays, I’d say, mig.
LikeLike
“Traying” was a great sport when I was at Carleton, although if you could get busted if a tray was found in your room. Why the administrators never just got out at the bottom of the hill and collected the trays as we came down, I’ll never know.
My silliest sledding story took place when I was a young adult living at 36th & Colfax. Was-band and I took some big pieces of cardboard out late one night to the Lyndale Farmstead park hill (behind the park admin building). We went down a few times but on what turned out to be our last trip, we hit a bump and went flying. I’m not sure whose or which body part bashed into my eye, but I had a massive shiner that lasted for a couple of weeks. Someone who didn’t know my was-band well took me aside that next week to make sure I was in a “safe relationship”. Snort.
LikeLike
At St. Olaf they finally figured out to put their battered broken trays outside the caf and we could get one without angering the authorities.
LikeLike
No hills to speak of at Concordia, although I remember people taking the trays to go sledding somewhere.
LikeLike
I loved skiing, sledding and skating as a kid. Although all of our equipment was pretty old or homespun, and none of us had fancy boots or especially warm jackets, we were always too busy and having too much fun to notice that we were freezing. Our favorite hill for sledding had large trees all over it, in retrospect it was a minor miracle that we never got hurt. Well, actually, I did once, broke my leg, but not from colliding with a tree. Now that I think about it, in summer we’d return home from the beach with purple lips from having stayed too long in the cold water. In winter our hands would be white from having stayed outside past the time they had gone numb.
LikeLike
The first winter we lived in Minnesota was one the worst. That was 1981/82. I think there were some days with wind chills even lower than the lowest recorded today. On the worst day of that winter I put on my warmest clothes and went outside to see what it would be like to be out in that weather. I think the wind chill must have been minus 60 or lower. Also there was heavy snow blowing sideways. I wasn’t outside for very long.
We came to Minnesota from Indiana which can also have some bad winter weather at least in the more Northern part of the state where they do some times have a day when the temperature doesn’t rise above zero. My boyhood home was in Southern Michigan. That is where I was living when got frost bite on my ears.
LikeLike
The state has actually broken all-time records today and tomorrow. This is in all recorded history. This is also the first time schools state-wide have been closed in history for temp reasons. They’ve been closed many times for 1-2 feet of snow, but never for dangerously low temps.
LikeLike
My Minnesota weather calendar indicates that the record low for today is minus 27 recorded in 1912. I guess there might be record lows today for some locations in the state, but not for all locations. The weather calendar gives the records for the Twin Cities. I believe the low today for the Twin Cities was minus 22 or close to that.
LikeLike
Actually, Dayton’s action is not without precedent. Arne Carlson closed all the public schools in the state three times in the 1990’s for extreme cold.
LikeLike
Feb of 1996 was our record of -43. Seems like it was cold for a week or two.
Our daughter was 8 months old and spent a week in the ICU with a severe cold / respiratory issues. Kelly spent the week at the hospital with her. We think our son must have stayed with Grandma and Grandpa because he was 3 1/2 and I was still milking cows so with all the chores I was doing he couldn’t stay in the house alone that long.
The night it was -43 an owl spent the night in the garage.
We had lots of snow too that winter and one of those cold night in the middle of milking cows, a man walked into the barn. He had been out ‘4 wheeling’ in his truck and got stuck. So he called a friend and that guy got stuck too. So then they walked down to my barn. I wasn’t very happy to hear what they were doing.
I made them wait until I finished milking and they were lucky I could still get a tractor started to pull them both out.
Turned out he owned a business in town and he made good by providing me a gift card to their store.
LikeLike
The dumbest thing I’ve done in cold, cold weather was to go job hunting before I understood the climate here. I should have known, having grown up in central Iowa, but had lived in warmer climes (Bay Area and NYC) for six years. I was staying with my folks in Marshalltown, and had borrowed their car in early December to drive up to Mpls, staying with a college friend. I remember being so happy to find the right place for this first interview. I got out of the car in my little flat shoes and a coat that had no real lining, no hat. Tromped through a snowdrift and luckily didn’t have far to go to get indoors. People looked at me like I was nuts. (I didn’t get that job.)
I learned though. Bought myself an Air force style parka with fur around the hood and a good pair of Sorrels. And long johns… Now I have a long coat that looks like a big quilt. I tell people who are moving here to get that sort of coat, some warm boots, and an attached garage.
LikeLike
Just found this on youtube (I was looking for something else… go figure) but thought it was a great tribute to our cold and sledding stories:
LikeLike
Love it! How can you resist that kind of spirit?
LikeLike
And I love that this man is a teacher. What else is he teaching his students?
LikeLike
Since I’ve lived in Minnesota my entire life, I haven’t had many instances when I was not adequately prepared for cold weather – it gets drilled into you pretty early on that you need to bundle up or freeze. I do remember quite a few times staying out too long and getting very cold. One time, I was younger than 10, and was playing outside with my friend and when we came inside, I was crying because my feet hurt so bad. His mom took off my boots and socks and put my feet in a pan of lukewarm water. I felt like the water was scalding hot, but she forced me to keep my feet in the water- kept telling me it wasn’t too hot.
More recently, a few years ago, I had some Christmas shopping to do, by bus. Tons of snow that winter. It was kinda warmish that day, which meant that the snow was sloppy and there were large puddles in the street. There was no way I could keep my feet dry. Have you ever waited for a bus in 30-ish temps with soaking wet feet? Not fun. Then, to add insult to injury, when I was walking home from the bus stop, I was walking on the street where the sidewalks hadn’t been shoveled – and suddenly a snow plow comes around the corner and comes right at me. I managed (barely) to get out of the way but was floundering in waist-deep snow. By the time I got home, I was pretty miserable.
LikeLike
for those who have lived here all their lives!!!!
LikeLike
When Dad was elementary school age, he attended the rural one room country schoolhouse, about a mile from the family farm. That location is now the site of the township hall, so I am very familiar with the mile of road at the top of a ridge he and his sister had to walk along every day to school. The wind just tears up there. Pretty sure it was only heated with a little coal stove too.
My sainted aunt on my mother’s side of the family remembered the 1941 blizzard well.
No wonder I have never gone out unprepared! Sturdiness, we have it.
LikeLike
LikeLike
I got a little nip of frostbite on the ears once when I was a teenager. I didn’t think it was all that cold when I left home, but I wasn’t thinking that length of exposure is a factor as well as absolute temperature. I had a very long walk to my destination and then a long walk home. I remember the tops of my ears peeled later, like a sunburn.
Today I went out and retrieved the birdbath deicer, which has been struggling. I poured in some warm water to dislodge as much of the ice around the edges as possible, then poured most of the water out. I’ll try reinstalling tomorrow when we are closer to the end of this snap.
Mostly I feel relieved and lucky that nothing bad has happened so far. This kind of cold triggers a sort of dread in me, bringing back memories of frozen pipes and dead batteries of years gone by. I have also been following the story of the UMD student who suffered hypothermia and frostbite in December. I am miserable for her. I gather she was scheduled for surgery today. It is sobering how damaging cold can be.
LikeLike
I’ve been trying to follow her case too, Linda. I understand that amputations were expected as a result of the damage. Extreme cold temps can be deadly.
LikeLike
I can’t remember if I told this story here before or not. I think it was in 1979 or 1980. It was March. There were still large patches of frozen snow on the ground in the woods. The ice had broken on the rivers a few days before.
I was with three guys who were pretty adventurous. I was adventurous too, back then, and it didn’t occur to me that the plan we decided on was dangerous.
We parked a car in Northfield near the river and returned to Faribault. We had a couple of canoes and a backpack full of food and beer waiting. We wore lots of warm clothes and our life preservers. We launched the canoes just below the Woolen Mill dam. One of the canoes we used was my mother’s.
It was really lovely at first. The river was running very, very fast though. The water seemed smooth but it was moving so fast that steering was challenging. I was in front.
Just past Scott’s Bluff, a white limestone landmark on the river that is well-known to people from both Faribault and Northfield, we entered an area of the river where there were lots of snags. Snags are trees that have fallen into the river. We had to steer quickly and weave our way around them. I was getting scared. Suddenly we were pushed directly into the root end of a snag. All the guys yelled at me, “Push off!” and “No, grab the roots!” I did the latter, which was a huge mistake. As my right hand reached for the tree roots, the canoe rolled smoothly over to the left, dumping my friend and I into the ice cold water.
I will never forget how it felt. My diaphragm went into spasms immediately. I had no control over my inhalations. I was moving rapidly toward another snag and I’m a good swimmer. I also had my life preserver on… smart for once in my life. I let the water take me to the tree and grabbed on. My friend was right behind me and I looked back. His head was completely submerged! I reached down and pulled him up by the collar of his jacket. He grabbed the tree roots and we both climbed up. I watched my mom’s canoe spiral downward to the bottom of the river. It would be lodged underneath that snag for two more months and would need a salvage crew to get it out.
We were stuck on a tree snag island in the middle of the river channel. In order to get to the bank, we’d have to get back in the water. We were quaking with cold. Then we noticed that the guys in the other canoe were paddling frantically back up the river toward us, against the current. They helped us down off the snag and into their canoe. We all went to the river bank and stripped off our clothes. I got to wear one of the guys’ long johns. My backpack and my car keys were gone forever. I think of them sometimes, down there in the Gulf of Mexico. We got back into the canoe and went to the next bridge crossing. I think it is County Road 29 for those who are familiar with the area. From there we walked to a farmhouse and asked to use a phone. We had to stand on the bridge and wait for our ride to come.
I have canoed since then, but never on a river and certainly not in March.
Oh, I froze the tips of my ears once too and had the same peeling that Linda experienced. They hurt for a long time and they’re not smooth on top anymore.
LikeLike
Kind of an unplanned polar bear plunge. Uff da. I’m glad you are here to tell the tale.
LikeLike
Yikes!
LikeLike
Oh my god, Krista, so glad you lived to tell the tale. Sometime only good luck pull us through some of our youthful stupid mistakes.
LikeLike
I will never forget the picture of Norm Coleman on the front page of the Minneapolis paper, desperately trying to wrap his scarf around his head and hands. It was when he was mayor of St. Paul, and there was a parade for President’s Day. The windchill was around 40 below. He showed up in an ordinary overcoat with no hat or gloves, only a rather flimsy yellow scarf. Sharon Sayles Belton was mayor of Minneapolis then, and she arrived in what the paper termed, IIRC, a “snug little pile of purple Gortex” – demonstrating who in the parade was a real Minnesotan and who wasn’t.
LikeLike
not to mention, who had common sense and who hadn’t.
LikeLike
LikeLike
Lyrics to the old Charlie McGuire song, “Oh Cold and Misery”
Am
It was early morn’ like so many before
C Am
Oh cold and misery
Am C G Am
I put on my coat and walked out of the door
G Am
Standing alone on the frozen ground
Additional verses:
I went to the place where my beast lay asleep
On four tires of rubber a long cord in its teeth
I opened the door and I jammed in the key
Not a sound did I hear, nor exhaust did I see
So I went to my neighbor and to her I spoke
She soon came a ‘ riding on white clouds of smoke
On it’s terminals bare, long cables I placed
And I gave it a charge with revenge of my face
It coughed, and it rumbled then let out a roar
Lashing it with gas pedal harsh commands I swore
The smell of the ether ether did hand in the air
And empty “Heet” cans lay about everywhere
And when we were moving its anger was gone
From its radio voice, came music and song
But tonight when the dark comes to its moving parts
It will again be the beast with the ice in its heart
http://www.charliemaguire.com/ILikeIt.html
LikeLike
I especially like “The beast with the ice in its heart”.
LikeLike