We had a brief (two days) cold snap here in the Arizona desert. But while I wrapped up my citrus trees against sub freezing temps, I was reminded of one of my earlier December chills growing up in Sarasota.
We had recently moved into a huge old two-story house down near the bay in Sarasota. It was so awesome compared to our track home in the Loma Linda subdivision we moved from. However, all was not "merry & bright". With my dad being a firefighter for the city, the first thing to go in the old place on Orange Ave. was the antique gas heaters and all those leaking gas lines under the house.
No gas heat meant that, until we got a fuel oil heater some time later, we were going to heat the house with the fireplace. My dad took us everywhere in the old '56 Ford pickup to get wood. Anyone who cut down a tree would see us there cleaning the place up for the wood we could carry off.
Then there were the infamous "telephone poles." I forget where my dad got these, but there were several of them and they all seemed to be 30 feet long (probably more like 14-16 ft. anyway.) Part of the chores for my two brothers and I for several days was to come home from school and, using a three foot bow saw, cut these poles to fireplace length. My dad made us a jig to make sure the cut sections would fit in the firebox. It's too bad we were only ten to fourteen years old then or we would have bought a round of drinks the day we sawed that last pole. The neighbors toasted, I'm sure, the day we burned the last of those creosote laden gems, too. Boy did they stink. But I think the smell drove the mosquitoes all the way down to Port Charlotte.
One other memory of that first cold winter happened a few days before Christmas. That year the temperature dropped to 19 degrees. My dad left the sprinklers on to help protect the bushes from getting frozen. We woke up to a real winter wonderland. Icicles hung from the branches and ice coated the ground. It is another one of those pictures etched in my memory, seeing the sun shining on that frigid scene and the steam rising as the sun warmed the side yard. I guess it was that cold this past winter or even colder according to my family & friends.
What are your chilliest memories of Florida?
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