Friday, September 23, 2011

I Like Celcius

I was just sitting out on my front steps sweltering. According the Environment Canada's website the temp right now is 26 degrees Celcius. That's 80F. 26C sounds so much better, but believe me, it is HOT!! There's some black clouds to the east, but that's immaterial, since the storms always arrive from the west. (heavy sigh).
  
I remember a few occasions when I was a kid, the temp was up around 101F. Luckily we lived in a big old brick house that was always cool. In the winter, upstairs in the bedrooms, it was frigid. Maybe that's why I like sleeping in a cold room with blankets piled high. Does anyone remember flannelette sheets?  The frost on the window was always swirled in pretty patterns, too.

We lived right beside a highway, with a big bluff of tall maple trees at the back of the house. Another cool thing from way back then was watching the shadows of the trees move around the walls as a car approached and eventually passed the house.  

Awe. Memories. Old fartdom is lots of fun.

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5 Comments:

Anonymous MaxEd said...

Loved flannelette sheets! Still have an inferior set.
Did you ever have to get dressed in the morning with one hip almost up against the warm stovepipe coming up through the floor of your bedroom? Builds character...and teaches you not to dawdle.

September 23, 2011 2:44 pm  
Blogger Louise said...

Nope. There were registers in the floor, but the heat didn't make it that far up. This old house had very high ceilings, too, so the heat had to be pump way up which means it didn't.

But putting your feet on a cold floor when you first jump out of bed accomplished the same thing.

September 23, 2011 3:11 pm  
Blogger Dave in Pa. said...

I remember flannelette sheets! It was an annual rite of fall-winter when Mom put the flannelette sheets on the beds. Augmented by a real wool blanket on top of them. Damn, they were so nice and cozy! :-)

The winters were colder, the snow was more frequent and deeper, the icicles from the eaves bigger, the snowflakes fatter, the frost patterns on the windows more dramatic.

I had a genuine Flexible Flyer sled too. That sucker could fly under the right conditions!

"Memories, pressed between the pages of my mind..."

I still have the pair of ice skates I bought at the military exchange when I was in the USAF, lo these many decades ago. Haven't used them in a long, long, long time. There's an ice rink not too far away from where I live now. I just might get them sharpened and give 'em a whirl this winter.

(I'm having a Currier and Ives moment, thanks to this thread. :-)

September 23, 2011 10:54 pm  
Blogger Louise said...

Speaking of Elvis, in the old one-roomed country school where I went from Grade 1 to 8, there was a small turn table and some records. At recess the girls assembled in the girls cloakroom and jived to the music of Elvis.

And the Currier and Ives pic, that reminds me to tobogganing down the valley banks. Great fun. Especially if you hit a rock on the way down, or couldn't stop in time to avoid hurtling into the bushes near the bottom at top speed.

My sister put her thumb out of joint on one pass down the hill. I very nearly had an eye taken out when I plowed into the bushes at the bottom. Sometimes you'd have to deliberately spill in order to avoid certain death. Of course the toboggan kept going all the way to the bottom, and the toboganners rolled a bit further, too.

Coming down was great fun. Climbing up again, not so much. But, the higher you went, the bigger the thrill coming down.

If the snow was fresh, you'd get a face-full of snow on the decent the first few times. After blazing a trail, though, it wasn't so bad.

Long toboggans were my favourite. Big kids at the back with their legs wrapped around the littler ones in middle and at the front. The really little ones got a face full of the cold stuff. A rite of passage, that was.

September 24, 2011 11:30 am  
Blogger Louise said...

Ah, and colder winters. For some reason, we didn't feel the cold until we were inside the house and our fingers were throbbing in pain. That's probably because in the house there was someone there to hear us cry and perhaps offer a bit of sympathy.

My poor mother. She had five kids and getting them all suited up to go out in the cold was a big task, made all the more frustrating when some of us wanted to come in again right away, or decided we had to pee after we were all bundled up. Kids!

September 24, 2011 11:36 am  

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