Tall tales pile up as temperatures plummet

MIDDLEBURGH — “How far below zero was the temperature at your house?” This was the prevailing question that opened most of the conversations around the tables at Mrs. K's Kitchen on this very cold Tuesday morning, Jan. 21.

Of course there was one OF who insisted that this wasn’t cold. The rest of his sentence started with, “I remember when, back in ’35, when it was minus 10 degrees for a month!” And the tall tales began again around the tables. The OMOTM are really good at this form of entertainment.

It also led to some age-old questions, such as, “Why is it that my snowblower starts with one pull when there is no snow on the driveway, and then my arm will fall off before it starts up on a cold snowy morning?”

Another question about the relative merits of using dry gas in a snowblower resulted in a rather complicated bunch of answers until some OFs mentioned that you should also have regular gas in combination with the dry gas. That led to a discussion of what ratio of dry gas to regular gas, etc., etc.

Here in the mountains and Hilltowns outside of the valley, the OMOTM enjoy the popular driving pastime of trying to avoid hitting things, like deer. One OF told the story of how this past week, while driving down in the flatlands, in the suburb of Guilderland, heading west just past the only stoplight and gas station, he managed to lose the game in a rather spectacular fashion.

He hit not one, but two deer at the same time! A buck and a doe.

The buck bounced off his fender and landed on its back in the middle of his hood, slid off onto the ground, got up, looked around for the doe. She had also bounced off the fender but did not fly upside down to land somewhere on his car; instead, she just had the wind knocked out of her.

She fell down, got her breath back, and continued running off between two houses. The buck saw her and was last seen chasing after her. Our OF was now shaking his head as he examined his beat up fender and dented hood.

He was heard to mutter, “I wasn’t expecting that to happen in a residential neighborhood.” (Having grown up in Delmar and Slingerlands, I could have told him a few stories, especially if some of your neighbors had an apple tree!)

Getting back to the conversations about cold weather, a few sorta related topics ensued. Thermostats and heating systems was one of these topics. When I moved into my house, I was impressed by the heating system that the previous owners had installed.

The house came with a high efficiency (plus 95 percent) liquefied petroleum gas boiler using both hot-water baseboard and radiant heating systems. I have heating zones, which I really like.

I can keep the two small guest bedrooms very cool in the winter, and my bedroom is also cool. In the loft where my computer is located, I keep it nice and warm as well as the main rooms downstairs. Programmable thermostats control these zones.

It is not a big house, just a bunch of smaller rooms that are the result of adding this or that over the years from when the house started out its life as a small two-bedroom camp on Warner’s Lake in 1952.

I have these wiz-bang thermostats that I have no idea how to program, so I am constantly adjusting them trying to save money. Looking at my latest heating bill, my efforts are not working. Not even close. With all this great equipment, my heating bills should make me the envy of the neighborhood. Nope.

Most of the rest of my OMOTM friends are in the same place as me. I think most of them have older thermostats and just leave them alone. Good idea, I’ll get there shortly, just as soon as I forget that I used to be smart about these things. At the rate I’m going, that should be sometime next week.

Silver King

A few months ago I wrote a column that involved an old farm tractor that had three wheels and was called a Silver King. One of the OMOTM, Joe Rack, gave me a very nice detailed metal image of the Silver King about two inches long by one and a half inches high.

It is like something you might put on the refrigerator door except it is not a magnet. It looks like it may have been made to hold the keys to the tractor. (I don't even know if they used keys in those days. I’ll ask.)

Anyway, I have it. Now I am wondering if Joe was just showing me what the three-wheeled Silver King looked like, or if he meant for me to keep it.

I can just imagine how he might have felt when I walked away with it. Probably thinking or muttering out loud, “How the hell did that happen? I was just showing him what that tractor he wrote about looked like, and he kept it!’”

Joe, I promise, I'll be at the Your Way Cafe next week and give it back to you if I did make a huge mistake.

Those OMOTM who didn't make a mistake about getting together at Mrs. K’s Kitchen were: Wally Guest, Harold Guest, Ed Goff, Hon. Albert E. Raymond, Jamey Darrah, Michael Kruzinski, Roland Tozer, Frank A. Fuss, Mark Traver, Joe Rack, Glenn Patterson, Wm Lichliter, George Washburn, John Jaz, Gerry Cross, Jack Norray, Herb Bahrmann, Dick Dexter, Lou Schenck, John Williams, Russ Pokorny, Warren Willsey, Jim Gardner, Bob Donnelly, Elwood Vandererbilt, Dave Hodgetts, John Dab, Paul Guiton, and me.