It's A-comin'

Guess it could have been worse.  While I was grumbling about the rain last weekend, the higher elevations in the state were getting an early dose of winter.  Up to 9 inches of it.

I guess I'd better get under the house and fix the insulation.  Winter's a-comin'.

I'm not exactly ancient, but I have some memories of winter that are probably a bit unusual compared to those of my contemporaries.  We lived on Wilson Hill in the Settlement, and that old farmhouse sits so it gets hit with winds six ways from Sunday.   The house leaked air around the windows something fierce. I can remember watching the curtains move in the breeze - when the windows were closed.  And it's in the higher elevations of West Virginia, so winters can be a bit crisp and snowy.  No such thing as a heat pump or furnace - we depended on coal stoves for cooking and heating.  I love coal, love the smell of it burning, but it has the same disadvantage as wood - without regular stoking the fires go out at night.  And that house would get COLD.  So cold that the contents of the chamber pots under the beds would freeze.  At which point the beds were moved downstairs next to to one of the stoves for the winter.

I don't have backup heat other than a big kerosene heater right now.  It's on my "to do" list, but it's a part of the "to do" list that's expensive and so I'm saving for it.  Eventually a wood stove will go in downstairs.  I could probably find a source of coal, but wood is really more sensible here, and a coal fire gets black dust into everything, anyway.  But a part of me will always wish it was coal.