The first things that pop into my head when I consider winter are not chilly winds and gleaming snowdrifts, but the clinking of tire chains and the smell of wet wool. These generate memories and pictures of myself at around age seven. The first picture shows me sitting in my dad’s big armchair in the kitchen. Dad was the Chevy dealer in my hometown, and unlike today’s neck-tied and suited executives, he was mainly a mechanic, doing hands-on repairs and maintenance on his customers’ cars. He came home from work shortly after five-thirty every evening, tired, hungry and greasy, smelling of sweat, motor oil and tobacco. Mother had acquired a comfortable second-hand overstuffed chair, had it covered with easy-to-clean an artificial leather called Naugahyde and put it by the kitchen window where Dad could relax after work while she finished preparing supper.
That chair smelled like Dad. It was one of my favorite spots to sit. I often snuggled on Dad’s lap while he read storybooks to me, or while we listened to Jack Benny, Fred Allen or “I Love a Mystery” on the radio. It was where I retreated when I missed him so much while he was away in the Army Air Corps during WWII. And during the dark early evenings of winter, it was where I sat before suppertime, listening for the approaching sound of tire chains and watching for the sweep of headlights as he turned into our driveway.
The other picture is triggered (rarely these days) by the smell of wet wool, and places me in the second grade classroom of East Ward Elementary School. The classrooms were heated by a series of steam pipes lining the space below the windows all around the outside walls of the rooms. During the coldest winter days, those pipes were dangerously hot as the heating system strove to keep the classrooms cozy. On snowy days they were usually draped with wet mittens and other snow-soaked outerwear in an attempt to dry them, especially after recess when we had been playing outdoors in the snowy schoolyard.
Other visions of past winters and the problems of winter travel provide great contrast to the comparative ease of today’s winter transportation. The glare of sunshine on freshly fallen snow reminds me of college days when we refused to be deterred by unplowed streets and icy highways. We were determined to get home for Thanksgiving, for semester break, for Christmas. At age twenty, we were invincible. Road conditions didn’t matter. I usually caught a ride with a fellow student from my hometown. He drove an old but reliable car – so old that it featured the same scratchy mohair upholstery as my grandfather’s old Chevy. Not only had the highway been unplowed after one particular February snowfall, the snow was glazed with a layer of glistening ice nearly an inch thick. But it was a sparkling blue-sky day, and we were in high spirits at the prospect of being home for the semester break. We set out, undaunted, heading south toward Kalona on that pristine highway, tires crunching through the shell of ice.
It was a straight shot from Kalona to Wellman on flat terrain and we made good time. With no deep ditches to worry about and no traffic in either direction, the risk of sliding off the right lane seemed irrelevant. Out of seemingly nowhere, a speeding Volkswagen whipped around us, fishtailing slightly on the slippery surface, its weight too little to break through the icy crust.
“He’s going to be in the ditch in another ten minutes,” my driver predicted, a half-chuckle in his voice. Sure enough, just before we got to Wellman, we spotted him, far out in a stuibbled cornfield where he’d slid down the gentle slope toward a creek.
We had given no thought to what we could have faced as we negotiated the curves and hills that awaited us as we crossed the Des Moines River between Oskaloosa and Knoxville. But, by the time we reached Sigourney, snowplows were out and had dealt with most of the drifts.