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When winter was more visible
Whenever there’s a bone chilling bite in the winter air I think of grandpa’s red flannel long johns and how they used to hang on the clothesline in our backyard in Bergenfield where I grew up; frozen like cardboard and dancing stiffly in the wind like some grotesque figure dangling from a scaffold. Somehow, I always felt somewhat embarrassed at the sight.
In those days in the early 1930s, there was no such thing as a dryer or an automatic washing machine and mom had a clothesline strung on pulleys from the back porch to the corner of the garage and she would bring the wet laundry up from the basement in a basket, attach it piece-by-piece to the line with wooden clothes pins, and reel it out like a sailor hoisting signal flags. On a cold winter’s day everything would freeze – shirts and sox, shorts and other items, like mom’s bloomers that I felt shouldn’t be displayed in public – but for some reason grandpa’s red flannels always seemed the most conspicuous.
After everything had hung out there for several hours mom would haul the clothes back in and pile it on the kitchen table, still stiff, and when it thawed it would be ready for ironing. I could never figure out how the process worked; how something hung out wet to freeze would be dry enough for ironing once it had thawed in the warmth of the kitchen but mom knew how to do it. Moms, it seems, are born with an instinctive knowledge of such mysterious things.
As I think back on grandpa’s long johns hanging on that line, it seems that winters were more visible when I was young. It wasn’t just the frozen clothes hanging in the backyard that gave away the time of year. Since every home was heated by coal the smoke would circle from the chimneys and it served as a weather vane, bending to show the direction and indicate the strength of the wind.
And at night the radiators would whistle a reassuring tune as the steam heat warmed your room and in the morning the windows would be coated so thickly with frost that you could etch pictures on the pane with your fingernail and mom would always say that Jack Frost had paid us a visit last night.
Milk, which was delivered in glass bottles to every doorstep, also served as a thermometer because if it was cold enough the milk would freeze and the cream would rise from the bottle, wearing the cap at a jaunty angle. Dad would point to it as proof that, whether you were talking about a bottle of milk or some athletic event or just a person’s accomplishment in life “the cream always rises to the top” and mom would turn the occasion into a special threat by spooning the frozen cream on our cereal and sprinkling some confectioner’s sugar on top.
The ashes from those coal burning fires also gave away the season. They were collected from the furnace and dumped in “ash cans” that stood in the driveways, handy for spreading on driveways and walks after a storm. It worked as good as salt but, of course, mom hated the way the ashes got tracked in the house. In World War II, incidentally, sailors on convoy duty adopted the term ‘ash can’ to refer to the cylindrical depth charges carried aboard ship.
I can also still see the winter garments hanging on hooks at Washington Elementary School, another tip-off that it was winter; wet coats and gloves, hats and scarves encrusted with snow, dripping onto the galoshes that stood in disarray on the floor. The galoshes were made of real rubber in the days before synthetic materials and they’d stretch as you pulled them over your shoes and no one could ever get them off without leaving their shoes inside. Between helping us get out of our clothes and back in them on a snowy winter’s day it’s a wonder that our teacher ever found time in between for lessons.
But most of all, when it turns bitter and my breath becomes visible in the air, I visualize grandpa’s long johns hanging like a red storm signal on that backyard line. Then I try to remember how he looked and I see an old man, as old as I am now myself. He looked, as I recall, a bit like Popeye; straggly white hair that always needed a cutting, a pipe clinched in his almost toothless mouth, still slim and sinewy; an aging sailor who in his youth had stoked coal aboard an ocean going steamer. Grandpa was a rugged man. But his image has grown dim. As have the memories of those winters of my youth.
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