Weather memories, and why they are so unreliable

So, the polar weather was not quite finished with us. Another blast from the north on the heels of a fine, sunny day that saw temperatures in the 60s. In January.

Oh, that's right. It's January. What did we expect?

I remember (this is a great way to start -- you know something good is coming) a few winters on Killough Valley over yonder in the Ozark hills. What do I remember? Sure, it got cold during the winter, but I don't remember the winters of my youth being outrageous, one way or the other.

I do remember the biggest snowfall of my childhood arrived in April -- after Easter -- and stayed on the ground for quite a few days. We had several inches of the white stuff. I used cardboard boxes from Ward's Supermarket in my favorite hometown to make blocks of snow which turned into a mighty fine igloo.

But that was a one-time deal. We rarely got snow on the farm, and when we did it disappeared in a day or two.

What we feared most was ice. If the gravel road up the hill to the highway glazed over with ice, we were icebound for the duration. The hill faced north, and there was no help from the sun.

Even without snow and ice, it got plenty cold in the valley. Our house was an old farmhouse perched on piers of fieldstone, so the cold air came up through the floor, through the walls and down from the ceiling.

The only heat source in that old farmhouse was a stove in the dining room, and that hot air pretty much stayed right around the stove. The kitchen, living room and two bedrooms had no heat of their own. In fact, my bedroom was farthest from the stove, and the door into the room was kept shut most of the time. I would often wake up to below-freezing temperatures in my bedroom with frost on the walls. I am not making this up.

That early morning dash to sit by the stove while dressing was the most miserable part of the day -- if you don't count the part where you had to go into the fields and find Lulu the milk cow and bring her to the barn and feed her and milk her. If you know what I mean.

We had ponds that frequently froze over. Those ponds were the source of drinking water for whatever livestock we had at the time. This meant chopping ice on a regular basis to make sure the cattle and horses could get to the water.

But the ponds were a place for fun too. We didn't have anything so sophisticated as skates. We slid across the ice ovals in our rubber boots until we couldn't feel our toes, which meant it was time to go to the house and sit around the stove.

The only sledding we did was at Shady Nook School, which had a fairly steep hill up to the boys' outhouse. Sledding was the only occasion that allowed girls to take the path up that hill.

No one had a real sled with metal runners. Everyone had a homemade sled of some kind. Some of them were super fast down the snow-packed hill. Others were not.

I had the idea that I could build my own sled. I found a couple of fine oak two-by-fours and some well-seasoned oak lumber and some nails. Pretty soon I had what passed, in my mind, for a sled. Being oak, it was as sturdy as you could possibly imagine. And it was impossibly heavy. My folks took the sled to school in the back of the pickup and unloaded it at the bottom of the hill near the school woodshed and pump.

At recess, everyone started hauling their sleds up the hill, racing to be the first ones down. Most everyone had made two or three trips down the hill while I struggled to pull my pile of oak up to the top. I finally made it, got on the sled and pushed off. The sled went about five feet before it broke through the icy crust and bogged down to a sudden stop.

I learned some lessons that day. I learned that you need to put a lot of thought into projects like sled building. I learned that "solid" does not mean "speed." And I learned that for all the Oreos in your lunch pail Tommy Brown would let you ride his sled, which went like the wind before coming to a stop at the bottom of the hill near third base on the old softball field.

Here in Cape Girardeau there are, indeed, signs that winter won't last forever, which, of course, we already knew.

Before the Big Blast of Winter, I noticed daffodils were peeking through the soil in our backyard flower beds. They are smart enough to keep their heads down when it's super cold, and they'll make a grand entrance in a few weeks.

During Monday's heat wave I did a bit of yard work, mainly pruning a few out-of-control spirea, hydrangea and honeysuckle shrubs that were threatening a yellow rose bush. It felt like spring. It smelled like spring. It looked like spring.

But it wasn't spring.

Don't worry. It's coming. Soon enough we will be mowing our yards twice a week. And telling stories about the winter of '14. Over and over.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.