Winter Vignette: Part 1

The season of death drags on. Cabin fever ratchets tight about our souls and tempers flare. We tiptoe around each other and peer at the calendar; is it not March?

Man and machinery, infrastructure and industry grind ever slower as ice hardens within the gears of modern life. We are merely smart monkeys (with only a passing association with smart) and we monkeys need tools to thrive. Without them we’d be forever caged and miserable on the Savannah; huddling fearful in the night, backs to a fire and spears aimed outward toward predators which outclass us. Without machines, my house and all around it for half a thousand miles, is uninhabitable. Whether one acknowledges it or not, it’s simply a fact. We always have and always will lean heavily on our immense assembly of mechanical force multipliers. Yet, only a very few of them were designed for extended use in current conditions.

In a temperature out of spec for the implements of humanity, civilization fades. Time starts to burn. Palliatives wear thin, the liquor cabinet runs dry, books are no longer interesting, conversation is stale, Netflix and all the crappy TV in creation cannot kill the pain of a winter like this. We edge toward the brink.

My woodstove is out cold.

As we ride out the storm, enduring the long bitter downhill slide, things go from bad, to worse, to farcical. When they are farcical is when the spring is nearest and the mind is most loopy. Punch drunk and reeling, the only thing to do is laugh.

I record this inadequate vignette to firm up my memory. I do this for the future; for when the tide changes and life returns anew. I’ll draw upon this memory when some nitwit on a balmy August evening is bitching about mosquitoes. I’ll consult with this memory so I’ll know in my heart I’m doing the right thing when I poleaxe the ungrateful son of a bitch!

…

It was sometime after midnight and yet another windstorm was in full fury. You could feel its fingers prying through our ill insulated and decrepit farmhouse. Alas, the dog needed to go out. Ugh!

I lavish care on my dog, who loves the attention and has earned it tenfold. It would not do to turn it loose only to find a frozen corpse in morning. I hope someday in my old age, should I attain it, people will give the same care to me.

Ruefully but dutifully, I bundle up in a dozen layers to accompany my dog in even the meanest weather. Indeed this night is among the worst. The scouring wind is brutal. It is an almost pathologically ill timed constitutional. Shivering in the intense cold, icy eyes ignoring what is normally a gorgeous sky, I wandered with my good friend and companion. We have only a limited plowed area in which to move. Soon, my dog did its deed. The dog, bred and equipped for the worst of nature, is cold too. It hurries.

Upon returning to the house I found the door wide open. Dear God! In this weather even a moment’s exposure drops the house’s precious internals to unfriendly levels. It is unthinkable I would’ve forgotten to close it.

I investigate the issue. In the intense cold the ground has shifted, as it does. Perhaps the door isn’t sitting well in it’s frame? Swearing, I clear ice from the threshold and slam it home. There’s a confounding issue. The doorknob isn’t turning well. It may be worn out, more likely it’s frozen. Luckily, the deadbolt holds. I turn in for a bad night’s sleep.

The next morning I wake to Mrs. Curmudgeon’s swearing. She gets up earlier than me and this often means the dog, which is now roughly a thousand years old in human years, immediately wants to got out. For most of the time since Christmas this has led to a string of invective from my better half; aimed at not so much my dog as the universe in general.

I’m a light sleeper but a late sleeper. I often wake up, fret about my precious dog, and fall asleep before I’m mobile enough to rescue wife or dog. This time the commotion continues. I shuffle down the stars to see the door is hopelessly jammed shut.

Mrs. Curmudgeon is bludgeoning it and it’s not moving an inch. If there was a house fire, we’d all die… which in the ongoing blizzard seems a pleasant way to go.

The deadbolt works fine but the doorknob can’t muster the twist to retract it’s bolt. Grumbling loudly I grab a screwdriver and work the thing open enough to release the door. The dog makes an urgent run for a snowy place to take a leak, dragging an ill humored wife behind. Bracing against the bitter wind, I examine the doorknob. I could probably fix it, but in this weather disassembling and methodically repairing anything is hopeless. The local hardware store carries doorknobs. It’s not worth the frozen fingers to mess with this one.

As a field expedient repair, I slap on some duct tape to disable it. I call this “the Watergate method”. I wait for dog and wife to get inside and secure the door with the deadbolt. For now we have a deadbolt but no doorknob. These things happen. Outside, the wind is howling and it’s nearly a white out. One needs a good door in such conditions. I shrug and go back to bed.

More to follow…