The Minnesota Stomp and Other Winter Adventures
People sometimes ask how we survive here in Minnesota when 30 below days are considered routine each year. (I've seen 42 below twice since living here.) I began thinking I should do a blog post about the lined pants, choppers, snowmobile boots and parkas we wear. Then Susie suggested that instead I do a post about some of our rituals, which outsiders will no doubt consider unusual. Here's some of what we came up with.
1. Climbing up to the roof with boiling hot water in a teapot.
This is probably something you've never had to deal with where you live. I've twice had to go up on roof with a teapot of boiling hot water to pour down the exhaust pipe so that the toilet flushes properly. It seems weird, but after trying to clear the toilet with a snake a friend of mine suggested this and --Voila! --it worked.
2. Heating a key with a match to unlock the trunk
Last week I heated up a key with a match so I could open the lock on my wife's trunk. (Her key wouldn't turn. I didn't know where the de-icer was.)
3. The Minnesota Stomp
If you live in Minnesota you'll notice this unusual ritual. When there's snow on the ground, people have learned to stomp their feet when they walk into the house, to get the snow off their boots. If several people arrive at the same time to a party they will all be stomping there in the foyer. Eventually we leave our shoes by the door and head into the house. We do this for about six months.
4. Warm your hands inside your jacket under your arm pits.
My brother-in-law Lloyd, who lives in Thailand, sent this one and the following. "I tell my students some of these things and I don't think they believe me."
5. In the Old Days
My father-in-law and his brother (Lloyd's dad and uncle) owned a plot of land in Payne where they would go to fell lumber for the woodstoves. Sometimes the temperatures dropped to 40, 50 and even 60 below and they were in the middle of nowhere. Lloyd shared this and the next as well.)
I once asked Dad how they used to get the truck started in really cold winter weather, up at Payne, where there was no electricity, no battery charger, no telephone, no nothing, and the truck had a 6-volt battery that barely turned the engine over even under the best of conditions.
First thing they did when they arrived was to take the truck battery into the shack and put it pretty close to the wood stove. They drained both the radiator fluid and the oil, and brought those into the shack, too. When it came time to leave, they'd put the oil back in first, then the radiator fluid, and the battery last. Then hoped to God it would start.
If it's not quite so cold and your electric engine heater isn't working, you can just warm up the oil pan by putting some coals from the wood stove (or glowing charcoal) in a shallow pan, and shove it under the engine pan for about 15 minutes. I used that method more than once, and it works well.
You can also heat the oil pan with newspaper soaked in used motor oil and lit with a match, but that of course has flames. If it's necessary to use the newspaper method, Dad told me to put the newspaper on a steel snow shovel, so it could be pulled out quickly, if necessary. I don't think I ever did it that way, because I always had coals in the wood-stove.
6. How to Start an Old Tractor
And here's how I used to start and run the old Farmall H in winter, before Albie Gorder helped me put a newer engine in it that could handle an electric starter. (Grandpa Hoad's 1942 Farmall H was a war model, and that's why it had steel wheels and a special fly-wheel that you couldn't use an electric starter with even if you had an electric starter.)
I've used this method more than once. You can ask Harrold (our brother-in-law). He was with me when we drove the tractor back and forth up and down the hill on the Birch Point Road, with the radiator shrouded in blankets in weather well below zero. Lloyd wrote this years ago ...
How to start a Farmall H with a hand crank, and a leaky radiator and cracked block so you've got to run water in it instead of antifreeze, when it's 30 below zero:
1. Put 2 five gallon pails of water on the wood-stove the night before.
2. When you get up in the morning, take the water off the stove and let it cool until you can stick your hand in it for 5 seconds without cooking it.
3. When you're coffeed up and got your boots, three jackets, two hats, and mitts on, take the two pails of water out to the tractor. Try not to spill any in your boots.
4. Jam the clutch pedal in with a stick, so you won't have to try to turn the whole gear box over when you crank the engine, because that 90 weight is thicker than molasses in January, and you WON'T be able to turn it over, even if you try.
5. Pour the first pail of water into the radiator with the radiator and block drain plugs removed, so the water just runs through onto the snow. That will pre-warm the block a little.
5. Quickly find the whittled wooden plugs in the snow under the seat of the tractor, and tap them into the long-ago stripped holes in the bottom of the radiator and the side of the cracked block.
6. Pour the second bucket of hot water into the radiator.
7. Set the choke to full, and the throttle to half (or a little more).
8. Crank her over a half a turn, slowly, so it DOESN'T fire, until gas is squirting out of the carburetor.
9. Set the choke to 2/3 full.
10. Crank her over fast this time, and hope to God it starts.
11. If it doesn't fire at all, it's probably because you forgot to pull the kill switch out. Do that quickly, then repeat steps 8 through 10.
12. If it fires, but doesn't start, repeat steps 8 through 10.
13. If it doesn't start in about 3 tries, get the water out of it QUICK, or you'll crack the block even worse. Then go back in the house and start over at step one, and cut your wood the next day instead of today.
14. If it does start, hang three blankets over the front cowling of the tractor to keep the fan from sucking cold air in and freezing your radiator.
15. When she's warmed up a good half an hour, (you can go in and have some coffee while doing that), take the stick off the clutch pedal, and verrrry slowly let the clutch out until you get the gear box turning. Then give that about 10 minutes to warm up before you try putting your belt pulley in gear to turn the saw rig. (If there's snow or ice on the pulley, you make a torch out of a twisted up sheet of newspaper and melt it off so your belt will stay on.)
16. Once you've got everything spinning, you can run her all day that way. You don't shut her down at noon, of course.
* * * *
That's just one of the luxuries of being your own boss in Northern Minnesota.
For the record, this is the part of the country where young Bobby Zimmerman grew up.
 |
| Photo by Galina N on Unsplash |
1. Climbing up to the roof with boiling hot water in a teapot.
This is probably something you've never had to deal with where you live. I've twice had to go up on roof with a teapot of boiling hot water to pour down the exhaust pipe so that the toilet flushes properly. It seems weird, but after trying to clear the toilet with a snake a friend of mine suggested this and --Voila! --it worked.
2. Heating a key with a match to unlock the trunk
Last week I heated up a key with a match so I could open the lock on my wife's trunk. (Her key wouldn't turn. I didn't know where the de-icer was.)
3. The Minnesota Stomp
If you live in Minnesota you'll notice this unusual ritual. When there's snow on the ground, people have learned to stomp their feet when they walk into the house, to get the snow off their boots. If several people arrive at the same time to a party they will all be stomping there in the foyer. Eventually we leave our shoes by the door and head into the house. We do this for about six months.
4. Warm your hands inside your jacket under your arm pits.
My brother-in-law Lloyd, who lives in Thailand, sent this one and the following. "I tell my students some of these things and I don't think they believe me."
5. In the Old Days
My father-in-law and his brother (Lloyd's dad and uncle) owned a plot of land in Payne where they would go to fell lumber for the woodstoves. Sometimes the temperatures dropped to 40, 50 and even 60 below and they were in the middle of nowhere. Lloyd shared this and the next as well.)
I once asked Dad how they used to get the truck started in really cold winter weather, up at Payne, where there was no electricity, no battery charger, no telephone, no nothing, and the truck had a 6-volt battery that barely turned the engine over even under the best of conditions.
First thing they did when they arrived was to take the truck battery into the shack and put it pretty close to the wood stove. They drained both the radiator fluid and the oil, and brought those into the shack, too. When it came time to leave, they'd put the oil back in first, then the radiator fluid, and the battery last. Then hoped to God it would start.
If it's not quite so cold and your electric engine heater isn't working, you can just warm up the oil pan by putting some coals from the wood stove (or glowing charcoal) in a shallow pan, and shove it under the engine pan for about 15 minutes. I used that method more than once, and it works well.
You can also heat the oil pan with newspaper soaked in used motor oil and lit with a match, but that of course has flames. If it's necessary to use the newspaper method, Dad told me to put the newspaper on a steel snow shovel, so it could be pulled out quickly, if necessary. I don't think I ever did it that way, because I always had coals in the wood-stove.
6. How to Start an Old Tractor
 |
| Obviously not the tractor referenced in this story, though a Farmall H |
I've used this method more than once. You can ask Harrold (our brother-in-law). He was with me when we drove the tractor back and forth up and down the hill on the Birch Point Road, with the radiator shrouded in blankets in weather well below zero. Lloyd wrote this years ago ...
How to start a Farmall H with a hand crank, and a leaky radiator and cracked block so you've got to run water in it instead of antifreeze, when it's 30 below zero:
1. Put 2 five gallon pails of water on the wood-stove the night before.
2. When you get up in the morning, take the water off the stove and let it cool until you can stick your hand in it for 5 seconds without cooking it.
3. When you're coffeed up and got your boots, three jackets, two hats, and mitts on, take the two pails of water out to the tractor. Try not to spill any in your boots.
4. Jam the clutch pedal in with a stick, so you won't have to try to turn the whole gear box over when you crank the engine, because that 90 weight is thicker than molasses in January, and you WON'T be able to turn it over, even if you try.
5. Pour the first pail of water into the radiator with the radiator and block drain plugs removed, so the water just runs through onto the snow. That will pre-warm the block a little.
5. Quickly find the whittled wooden plugs in the snow under the seat of the tractor, and tap them into the long-ago stripped holes in the bottom of the radiator and the side of the cracked block.
6. Pour the second bucket of hot water into the radiator.
7. Set the choke to full, and the throttle to half (or a little more).
8. Crank her over a half a turn, slowly, so it DOESN'T fire, until gas is squirting out of the carburetor.
9. Set the choke to 2/3 full.
10. Crank her over fast this time, and hope to God it starts.
11. If it doesn't fire at all, it's probably because you forgot to pull the kill switch out. Do that quickly, then repeat steps 8 through 10.
12. If it fires, but doesn't start, repeat steps 8 through 10.
13. If it doesn't start in about 3 tries, get the water out of it QUICK, or you'll crack the block even worse. Then go back in the house and start over at step one, and cut your wood the next day instead of today.
14. If it does start, hang three blankets over the front cowling of the tractor to keep the fan from sucking cold air in and freezing your radiator.
15. When she's warmed up a good half an hour, (you can go in and have some coffee while doing that), take the stick off the clutch pedal, and verrrry slowly let the clutch out until you get the gear box turning. Then give that about 10 minutes to warm up before you try putting your belt pulley in gear to turn the saw rig. (If there's snow or ice on the pulley, you make a torch out of a twisted up sheet of newspaper and melt it off so your belt will stay on.)
16. Once you've got everything spinning, you can run her all day that way. You don't shut her down at noon, of course.
* * * *
That's just one of the luxuries of being your own boss in Northern Minnesota.
For the record, this is the part of the country where young Bobby Zimmerman grew up.
Lol
ReplyDeleteHarrold taught me another trick too, that I'd forgotten about: When you're working on a car, and using a trouble light, you can warm your hands a little by grabbing the trouble light, even the bare bulb, with your bare fingers.
Of course they tell you to never put stiff freezing hands under warm water to warm them, because it causes excruciating pain. I've done it many times anyway, and endured the pain, because I was in a hurry, and didn't have time to let them gradually warm up. Strange my fingers still work.
FWIW, this short video gives the history and reasons for the steel-wheeled model of Grandpa Hoad's tractor, the exact twin of the one I had for years-- except I never saw mine with any red paint at all left on it, not even in the 1960's.
https://youtu.be/128VRtzEvcs