It’s down to 54 degrees out there. And there’s water coming out of the sky.
Several days ago I heard my stepmother talking to another East Coaster, and explaining that she never got cold in New Jersey—that it wasn’t until she relocated to Southern California that she was personally subjected to temperature extremes. Because between the fact that one had to wear warm clothes out there, and the fact that the heat was always on, one just didn’t get chilly.
Of course, I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that they overheat their homes all over the Eastern Seaboard: they don’t even turn the thermostat down at night, like we do on the West Coast (even in most of the parts that have actual weather).
During my childhood when we lived in Maryland we were renting a house that didn’t have heat, so we used a few space heaters, and the fireplace. Every morning before work during the wintertime my mother would get up and make a fire; my brother and I would dress in front of the fireplace while she made breakfast. I haven’t talked to my brother about which place he liked better, but I far preferred the no-heat house over the farm that didn’t have indoor plumbing. (Well, it did, but there was a pump that had to be run, and its limit was the same as that of the toilet—three gallons, five gallons, something like that. This meant there was water for washing dishes after supper, but we used an outhouse for excretion purposes.)
It did not occur to me that we were doing anything unusual until my mother requested that I delete the part about not having heat in the house when I wrote a letter back here to my best friend in West Los Angeles.
This is a genuine culture clash, not limited to those of us who come from Methodist-Unitarian backgrounds, or families whose grandparents lived in Nebraska: I truly think most of my friends feel the same way. When there was a problem with David Coons’s heating system, he went a winter or two without central heat by getting several space heaters and wearing long underwear. (Eventually, the problem was diagnosed: dead opossums, or maybe raccoons, in the venting system. I have pictures; you want to see them? David scraped the money together, and fixed the problem. I sometimes wonder whether he or my brother would win in a miser-off.) But the space-heater system actually made sense, since Dave’s house is a five-bedroom number, and a few of the rooms weren’t even being used.
Of course, Coonsie is also from Santa Monica, which is a beach town (and my second hometown). It’s close enough to the ocean that exteriors have to be painted that much more often, because of the salt air. Going out there to see friends requires that I bring a hat and scarf during the winter, and at least a light jacket in the summer; temperatures drop after dark. But it’s so freaking nice that one wants to be outside, no matter if it’s a little cold. It’s like living up here in the hills, only that much more so.
My mother’s friend Lottie has come out from Maryland to visit her in Santa Monica a few times, and they could not reach a reasonable compromise when it came to the thermostat, despite Mom’s love for Lottie and her respect for a Holocaust survivor who had to bury two of her children when they were too young (that is, in their teens and twenties).
Lottie kept wanting to turn the heat on, even at night, and when my mother offered her a second comforter, Lottie explained that she liked to sleep with only “one thin blanket.” So my mother would spend a few weeks in a sauna-like environment, fretting unhappily about her next heating bill.
I’ve got to go find my knit cap and pour another cup of coffee. Because it’s . . . cold.
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We finally warmed up in Oakland today after about a week of unpleasant cold…..so bad that I almost turned the heat on a couple of times. So I suspect better weather is heading your way……….