COPING IN THE COLD

Hallie asked how Ina coped when it was cold. The house wasn't insulated, so you know it was drafty. No electricity, no heat source other than wood stoves, no pipes to worry about -- that in itself was probably a good thing. The kitchen stove was a wood stove, and while it was a heat source, the kitchen was not open to the dining room as it is today, which would have restricted the heat flow. So, yes, they closed the pocket doors between the living and dining rooms and lit a wood stove which sat at the bottom of the stairs -- perhaps the very one Mike installed in his shop. And their waking hours were spent in the kitchen and dining room. You can read for yourself what Ina said about coping in the cold.

Ina writes to Vance on February 16, 1936:

Well, I wish you were here right now. The hill east is a marvelous pink and the shadows fall blue to its top. We have about three feet of snow and it is cold. It began piling up week before last and we have had sub-zero weather off and on ever since. Week ago Friday at 9:30 p.m. it was 12 degrees below. That is the coldest we have noted. The last few days are colder – yesterday a.m. it was 8 degrees below, this a.m. 6 degrees below and the highest today we noted was 4 degrees above. Dad keeps a lantern in the cellar “of a nite” and nothing has frozen. At Musser’s it registered 19 degrees below. Reports from Saskatchewan are as low as 55 degrees below, Montana 40 degrees below. I dread to think of Pearl [living the farm life in Alberta] . . . The front door is corked up. We have been using the dining room evenings this cold weather. It is so much warmer, but I’m going back to the other room as soon as possible. I make a little fire in the bedroom every evening now and then the bed is warm. I hang up some things by the stove so keep comfortable. . . Now I must go and build the fire in the bedroom and wash my late dinner dishes and do all the little things to make the evening comfortable. . . . Monday, a.m., and 4 degrees below but clear as a bell. Dad has Earl Plank here and they are sawing down a tree by the pond for wood. We have plenty of limbs but snow too deep to get to them.

The stove she speaks of lighting in the evenings was probably in the master bedroom upstairs. That was Jack's room. In their latter years, she used the downstairs bedroom while Jack slept upstairs. And from what she says, it sounds as if they felled a tree in cold weather because they can't get to the wood. Oh well -- something for the guys to do. But if they couldn't get to the wood, could they get to the outhouse? KW