Some Observations from the Hill
By HH (Hub) Brown of Owego

Whenever I hear people complain about cold weather, I am reminded of the winter of 1933 and '34. We had spent two winters in this little house of wood to which a stone addition had been built in 1890. Both winters had been real mild ones leading us to believe that this little house could withstand any winter. I think that it wasn't until the '50's when they started keeping records, so you seldom hear this winter mentioned. A neighbor, Mr. Welch, said that for 19 days in February the temperature never got up to zero.

Up in the Sole Leather Tannery where I worked nights, the big metal heat ducts were covered with dates and records of the cold weather. At lunchtime, the men would gather in some warm place and tell how cold it had been at their home. Someone would write it down. Men working for the water works in the village were kept busy digging down to where the mains had frozen. They would build fires to thaw them, and sometimes the pipes would freeze each side of where the fire had been. There was no snow through all this cold weather which made it worse.

The local school had been closed and my wife got the job of taking the kids to school in town. She drove a 1931 Model A Ford which was the hardest car to start that I ever saw. I drove an old 1928 Model A which, after I had turned the engine a couple times with the crank, would start right up. The coldest morning that winter -- some said it went to 40 below -- the '31 never grunted, so I got in that and had my wife push me across the level to the top of the steep School House hill. I put the car in high gear, got a good rolling start and let the clutch in and it just skidded on that rough, frozen dirt. While waiting for the two boys to show up, I got the crank, put it in place, and stood on it. After a little, I felt it move and then it went to the bottom. I did this a couple times more and as soon as the boys got in we coasted down the next grade and the engine started. My wife followed us to the next farm, got out of the car for something and ended with two frozen lumps in her face. The farmer there couldn't start his car and had to hitch his horses up to take the milk to town. He ended up with frozen feet and lost two toes.

That day was when we found out our house wasn't really equipped for severe winter weather for with fires in both stoves our three little girls' pot froze under the front room stove and the tea kettle froze on the back of the kitchen stove.

One night, some of the men at lunchtime were reporting about the cold temperatures at home when Guy Bishop joined them. You always expected a funny comment from him, so someone asked, "How cold was it at your house, Guy?" "Just zero," he said. "Well, where do you keep your thermometer?" he was asked. "We always keep it right behind the kitchen stove," he said.