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Making the best of North Country winters from over 50 years ago

Posted 1/28/16

To the Editor: Potsdam winters are legendary. They are harsh, unforgiving, and seem to go on forever. Temperatures frequently plummet to below zero and if an occasional wind kicks up, it is almost …

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Making the best of North Country winters from over 50 years ago

Posted

To the Editor:

Potsdam winters are legendary. They are harsh, unforgiving, and seem to go on forever. Temperatures frequently plummet to below zero and if an occasional wind kicks up, it is almost unbearable. I remember my dad telling me a story about one particular record-setting cold snap in the 1950s when temperatures hovered near minus 40 for several days—cold even for Potsdam.

No one had a garage or even a carport where we lived on Diaper Hill (aka Riverside Drive--the new Clarkson faculty housing complex). Most cars wouldn’t start in these frigid temperatures, but the ones that did were always stuffed to capacity with profs and their kids headed for downtown Potsdam to Snell Hall and the Congdon Campus School. Everyone knew if a car started and was headed that way, they were welcome to a ride--if they could find a seat. Space was at a premium and a seat usually meant someone else’s lap. We were packed in like sardines.

In the 1950s everything that happened at Clarkson (then “college”, not yet “university”) revolved around Snell Hall and the surrounding academic buildings--and the Lewis House. Transportation downtown was critical. The Clarkson campus on the hill that would eventually be built across the street from Diaper Hill, on the site of the abandoned Clarkson family mansion land, was then years from reality.

Dad’s story about this record cold goes like this: one of his brilliant engineering buddies (and there were plenty of them teaching at Clarkson), named Ralph Gentile (who had a wife Imelda and a couple of small children), had devised a scheme to beat the brutal cold and to be able to start his engine each morning. (He already had quite a reputation at Clarkson as dad told me it was widely known Ralph had built his own television set.)

So Ralph’s trick was this: each night after he parked, he emptied his engine oil into a container and brought it into his apartment to keep warm. He also removed the battery and brought that inside. When morning came he went out to the gravel parking lot and poured the warm oil back into his ice block of a car, reinstalled the warm battery, and the old Dodge fired right up.

Ralph had a good thing going (except for the nightmare ride downtown in a car filled with wriggling, noisy neighbors spilling out the windows). He continued his routine with the oil and battery for a couple of days. In this life-threatening cold Ralph was the envy of Diaper Hill—and he was pretty proud. Then one morning something unexpected happened: he poured in the oil, replaced the battery, started up the engine, and loaded up his car as usual with stranded neighbors.

Ralph figured he had it made and started to drive off. But -- when he went to engage the stick shift, it was so brittle with the sub-zero cold that it snapped right off in his hand! You can imagine Ralph’s surprise and humiliation--his brilliant scheme had failed. That was the talk of Diaper Hill for quite awhile.

Cold weather did stop cars, but it didn’t stop us kids from going out to play on weekends, vacations, or on a rare snow day when school was cancelled. But going out in frigid temperatures was hard on the moms as on them fell the burden of dressing their kiddos in clothing that would stand up to Old Man Winter and prevent frostbite (plus insure mom had a little time to herself without little ones under foot). This required a tedious amount of preparation.

The ritual went something like this: the first thing to go on was the obligatory long cotton underwear (it could’ve been one piece or maybe two). Over this went a sweater and corduroy or wool pants. Next went on the nylon snow pants that zipped up the front with adjustable suspenders. Little feet were covered with a pair of cotton socks followed by a pair of shoes which were covered by heavy woolen sox. The nylon or wool snow jacket (usually with an attached hood) would come next, followed by heavy lined rubber boots that went over all the other foot gear.

But wait--we’re not done yet. Add to this a pair of thin hand-knit woolen mittens with heavy woolen mittens placed over the thinner ones. These mittens did not always include a separate thumb slot if your mom was an inexperienced knitter which made it awkward to make snowballs or perform other necessary or desirable activities outside.

The final touch for boys was the knit cap and for girls it was the knit hat that tied around the chin with a yarn ball that bobbed at the end of a long yarn braid sewn on to the back of the hat. Of course, if it was extremely cold out, there would be a thin woolen scarf placed over your nose and mouth and tied at the back of your head by mom, followed by a heavier woolen scarf tied in the same manner. Breathing was not always easy—labored, but possible.

The result was a stiff human bundle sufficiently protected from the biting cold, but without any flexibility and almost incapable of motoring across the snowy terrain without toppling over.

I witnessed many a Diaper Hill kid wearing so many confining layers that when launched out the front door by mom, they plopped off the concrete steps and fell face first into the snow. Mom had to come to the rescue and step outside to pick up her precious bundle and set him or her upright again. Snow angels were a snap as a lot of the time was spent on the ground.

And so the wintry days would pass playing with friends, trudging through drifts, having snowball fights, making snow men, or carving snow forts or igloos out of the mountainous heaps of snow left by the gargantuan town snow plows.

Another favorite activity (if the conditions were right) was using mom’s broom or a snow shovel to knock down gigantic icicles hanging low from the eaves and sucking on them if you were thirsty. If big enough and sharp enough, they also made good weapons for a make-believe sword fight.

The wintry outdoors provided many hours of entertainment until either you were beckoned prematurely by Mother Nature or called in for lunch by mom. Once inside, any sopping outer clothes were taken off and placed on a wooden drying rack over a heating vent.

I can still remember the smell of wet, hot wool. You tossed down your Campbell’s chicken noodle or tomato soup with saltine crackers (and maybe a cup of hot cocoa with marshmallows if you were lucky), took a pee, then launched out for the second leg of your wintry adventure. At the end of the day you always knew you had your mom’s warm, hearty meal to look forward to with the entire family sitting together at the kitchen table.

So the winters passed in this uneventful, but predictable way. The cold and snow didn’t keep us inside, and it didn’t intimidate us--it presented the opportunity for all types of adventures. No one in Potsdam complained much about the weather—it was just a fact of life in the North Country--another challenge to be met.

But at some point near the end of March we were weary and looked eagerly for some sign of spring. Early spring for us kids was marble shooting season--something we looked forward to with great anticipation.

North Country folk are hearty folk, and when I hear my neighbors in our Capital Region complaining about a meager few inches of snow and temperatures hovering near zero, I just chuckle and say: You don’t know what a real winter is!

Sandra Paige Sorell

Formerly of Potsdam