2025, Family, History, home, Uncategorized, Weather

A Thing Of The Past

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For the first time ever we have an insulated three stall garage with copius built-in cupboards and cabinets. It has yet to get below freezing out there.

There is some trouble in paradise, however, since the cupboards take up so much space that Husband’s pickup is too long to fit in the garage. He is happy to park it outside, but he is concerned how to make sure it can start on the coldest days.

When he worked on the Fort Berthold Reservation he had an electromagnetic thingy that attached to the engine block and kept everything nice and warm. The only problem with one of those now is that he has to crawl under the truck to attach it, and he isn’t that limber anymore. It also needs to be removed before you drive the vehicle. I phoned a local car repair place and asked if the still installed block heaters, something that he could easily just plug in. They hemmed and hawed and told me that block heaters are a thing of the past but they could install one. I declined, as they sounded so hesitant. We went to NAPA and got another electromagnetic thingy and he will deal with it. It is on the oilpan now. If he has trouble crawling out and standing up I will help him.

For some reason, this put in my mind a conversation I had with a directory assistance operator I had in the early 1980’s when we lived in Winnipeg. This was before computer search engines. I needed the phone number for the Curtis Hotel in Minneapolis. We had stayed there on our honeymoon a year or so before and were planning a trip to the Cities. The operator told me there was no such number. I argued with her that there must be, and she finally got exasperated with me and said “Ma’am, they blew it up!” I had missed that news.

What have you discovered to be obsolete? Any memories of the Curtis Hotel? Do you have an engine block heater?

40 thoughts on “A Thing Of The Past”

  1. We retired from Taiwan to the USA in 2018, and didn’t bring all that much with us. My wife’s parents had downsized the previous year, and imagined (rightly) that they were provisioning us for a retirement much like theirs. For example: we received their VHS player. We also received a turntable for the vinyl records they gave us, and 3 or 4 recliner chairs.
    They didn’t use a computer, so we were saved having to decommission one of those, but plenty of the old files that I brought along on various media will never again be accessed.
    We bought an electric Chevy recently enough to still be making payments on it until the middle of 2026, so we don’t heat the block or change the oil.
    I sense a round of de-accessioning in the first half of 2026. The house is big, and the basement is hardly full, but I have too damn much stuff.

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  2. I am selectively obsolete and trending toward anachronistic.

    I’ve never had a block heater for any of my vehicles and only occasionally have I had a garage space available. It hasn’t been a problem as long as the battery is robust.

    If it were me, I would remove cabinets in your massive garage until my truck fit.

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    2. is he driving the truck regularly? a new battery would be easier and less expensive that the block heater. the cabinets in the garage could serve as a tool closet for the fix it projects that will certainly come your way now that youre home full time . driving the truck a couple times a year might be more than enough to bury it in the pecking order.

      obsolete happens quickly these days i run into it often. at last nights card game one of the guys said when he commented that its according to hoyle noone knew what he was talking about. hoyle was the card players guide to poker rules everyone refered to .. not anymore.

      curtis was a favorite watering hole early 70’s. i loved those classic holels curtis, lemmington , were were the last to go after minneapolis cleaned up all those unfashionable relics. lets build new electric razor looking things with no soul going forward.

      there is a dipstick heater or what people do today is to buy that $50 jump starter the size of a loaf of banana bread to use when its too cold for an old battery (3 days a year) what are the odds he’ll drive the truck those days ?

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  3. Might have been fun to stay on the phone with that operator and ask her who blew it up, and why… : )

    I have several boom boxes, because when mine died, I made the mistake of telling everyone I know how I was looking for one that would play both CDs and tapes. I now have in the basement two of them that don’t work properly, and the one I’m using upstairs works for CDs but not tapes. I will get rid of them next time there is an “electronics dump day” somewhere nearby.

    And I still need something to play my Christmas tapes on!

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  4. Our cars don’t have block heaters anymore, I think my truck does, but it’s a diesel, and even that has started in some pretty cold temperatures.

    My main winter tractor has a block heater and I plug that in. The other tractor that I use for tillage also has a block heater, but I don’t use it in the winter. Along about January some nice day I will start it up and drive it around the yard just for some exercise.
    Both tractors, and a lot of diesel machinery, has a pre-heater, sort of glow plug, built-in. Typically you push the key in and hold it for 15 or 20 seconds and then the tractor will start right up. A bigger issue is getting all the oil warmed up and moving For the hydraulics. The loader or the steering will be kind of stiff at first.

    I used to drive a Ford Escape and that thing needed a block heater to start in the winter. And then we had some geese that chewed the plug off. Stupid geese.

    The first tractor that I bought myself was a German made Deutz that was air cooled. It had an oil pan heater and also an element up around the cylinder heads. I had to plug both of those in to get that to start in the winter.

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  5. No block heaters. I recall that my Dad would often put blankets inside the engine compartment to retain heat.
    Pay phones are mostly gone


    Hopefully we never come to this.

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  6. I still have my film cameras but I don’t know why, exactly, since I no longer have a darkroom and getting film processed is inconvenient at best. I have been through several generations of digital cameras since I last shot film.

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  8. The parking lots at the University of Manitoba looked like cemeteries as there were rows of posts with electrial outlets for people to plug in their vehicle block heaters.

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    1. up in that far north of Minnesota and the adjoining Manitoba populated part of the province those posts with the electrical plug-ins outside schools hotels businesses are standard operating because it gets down to 40 below a couple nights a year every year it gets down below zero regularly and a lot of the people who stop into those hotels or schools don’t have the good batteries

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  9. I love old trucks that are kept around just for the work detail that comes around a couple times a year. Maybe if he just buys one of those fancy truck covers that you tie down with a couple of bungee cords and gets the battery jump starter he would be set for the last four or five years that he needs the truck. I hate to think about tearing down the beautiful cabinet tree that I’m visualizing that the former owner had installed in the garage for a workshop area.

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  11. No block heaters for me. I just make sure my battery is good, and I haven’t had any trouble for years. I’m not as adventurous as I once was, though, and I don’t have to work until midnight anymore.

    So many things are obsolete. I really wish my 2024 Toyota had a CD player. A CD player should be an option, but it’s not even available anymore!

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  12. Owning a full size pick-up truck may have made sense when you lived in the middle of nowhere, but I’m wondering if it still does? I also agree with Bill that removing some of the cabinetry from the garage makes sense, in whole or in part, so that you can park whatever vehicles you own in a sheltered space. If Chris doesn’t have the skills and/or tools required to dismantle the cabinets, I’m sure you can find a local handyperson who does.

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    1. I will say that Luverne is not the middle of Nowhere, but you can see Nowhere out your front window. Having a heavy full-size pick up, especially in a blizzard, might be a really good idea.

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  13. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I think I am obsolete most days.

    When I lived way-way North (90 miles south of the Canadian border and 16 miles north of Grand Rapids) things got really cold. We needed a block heater on our little Datsun. It worked fine and there is little of interest there. However, the LP gas fueling the furnace, the stove and water heater, would liquify at -39 degrees. It would get to -40 degrees at which point the big tank needed a tank heater. The guy in charge before my wasband decided that was too putsy, and he just lit an open fire under the tank. This was a really bad idea and horribly dangerous. Waistband purchased the tank heater which kept it all going without the risk of an explosion.

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  14. Jacque stole my answer. I re-negotiated my cable contract last week and it has necessitated having to re-sign in on all of our devices. And not just once but for every part of the platform so once for Xfinity, once for Disney+ once for Peacock once for Hulu. Times four. This just makes me insane and I can never figure it out so YA has had to do all of them.

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