I don't know who we owe for this photo of our Penrose home. The winter of 1959 I spent at BYU. The day I left to return to school the temperature was 40 below zero. It doesn't look much warmer in this photo. Frost is on everything! We have all had our own share of too much winter weather this year. But really did any of us have anything that compared with this? Monday, February 16, 2009
Winter 1959
I don't know who we owe for this photo of our Penrose home. The winter of 1959 I spent at BYU. The day I left to return to school the temperature was 40 below zero. It doesn't look much warmer in this photo. Frost is on everything! We have all had our own share of too much winter weather this year. But really did any of us have anything that compared with this? 
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
What a gem of a frigid, frosty day. We all endured those days in various places where we lived, but right now I think I'll stay in St. George. We didn't have the addition on the house in Penrose when I left in 1950, and the propane tank must have been a miracle after getting up and dressed in our unheated bedrooms to get on the bus where we froze all the way to school. But we lived.
This may have been one of my attempts at taking pictures. I think I have the negative - or not. Dwight's right, the magic of the propane heater in the living room was a miracle. And the garden had been moved up closer to the house from down close to the east-west road by the mailbox. We did live - and happily so. Remember how cold it would be when it snowed, and playing fox and geese out where the yard light was until our hands, feet and faces were numb. And then there was the fun of walking on top of the deep snow that came to the top of the fence posts one year. Who would have guessed that snow fell vertically, because, after all, we only saw it fall horizontally (wind and snow is a mean combination).
As I sit in our warm "office", and look out the window at snow-laden evergreens, after about 8-10 inches of snow fell in the night and early morning (and continues to drift down), with the wind beginning to move things around a bit more, I am thankful that it is at least 31 degrees outside. Cold is all relative, but that Wyoming bitter deep freeze is a little harder to bear. (I remember the winter of 1973 when it stayed below 30 for about four days after Christmas.) We remember, but no longer feel the bitter cold of Penrose without indoor plumbing, with a coal stove in the living room and the range in the kitchen, and frost thick on the bedroom windows. Brrrrr!
OK, no propane heater in the living room, I know it is just a figure of speech but the story is too good to pass up. Dad started a hole under the kitchen with the use of the fresnel. The greatest thing about that was the morning he went back to work and the entire hole was filled with toads. They would disappear as fast as they showed up but it was quite a show. When the hole was done we poured concrete and made a little furnace room. Dad decided to level the house at this time too. I was sent to the back of the crawl space with the blocking since dad didn't fit. Remember, he was in very good shape. Totally freaky. Heasler plumbing then came out and installed a furnace. Sorry you elder Bloods but we had heat vents in our bedrooms. Life is good on the baby side of the family.
Thanks, Steve. Dad was skinny in those days, but you were even skinnier. I had always pictured (?) Dad crawling under the house to do that stuff - and shuddered - but now I can replace him with you - and still shudder. Claustrophobia +++. Have you ever done anything similar since? Just remember that the frost-cold, etc. was character building. I suppose that's why your three older siblings are such characters? Oh, please forgive me, mine elder brother and sister.
Ah, but there was a heater in the living room before the furnace went in. It was long (maybe 4')and light brown and when the grate would light up it looked like a real fireplace. Now whether it was run by propane or butane, I can't tell the difference, but it was there. It was vented out through the chimney.
This is really difficult, OK, maybe.
Just maybe?
Post a Comment