November 18, 2007

Statesville may be in for another peculiar winter

Every day I check the average temperture for that day in the newspaper, and it is almost always lower than the predicted high.

I cannot remember the last time it snowed — heck I cannot remember the last time it rained. The Davidson radio station WDAV has just announced the forecast as sunny and bright but admitted that it had rained some in Davidson and was still cloudy there.

I guess we are in for another odd winter. My mother told me all the ice they had was cut off the Catawba River (before Lookout Dam was built) and stored in a small log building to be used in the summertime. You can still occasionally see these old tiny log buildings along Lake Norman.

They were built by digging a hole about 6 feet deep and erecting a small building about 4 feet high with a sloping wood shingle roof.

Several husky men could move these away from the pit so the floor could be covered with several inches of sawdust.

Square ice blocks were lowered onto the sawdust. These ice blocks were spaced about 2 inches apart, and sawdust was packed around their sides. More sawdust was spread on the ice, and the process was repeated until the hole was filled.

The log structure was pulled over the ice, and more sawdust was shoved inside to keep the ice as cold as possible.

This process was explained to me by an old farmer when we were walking over the fields looking for a Christmas tree. I cannot remember how the blocks were taken out in the summer. My mother said they usually got ice to put in ice cream makers.

She was the accountant for Mr. Miller, and around 1920, he got a compressor for Miller Hardware Store that would freeze water, and Stony Point could have ice all year long.

By that time, the river did not freeze over every year. I was born Nov. 6, 1932, in a real blizzard. Dr. Herman did not want Mother to get out in it, so he came to our house on Cherry Street and delivered me there.

Winters seemed really cold, and everyone huddled over every stove that was burning.

My children were all born in October through January, and I remember having to put the chains on the car at night and take them off the next morning. Two were born in heavy snow, and one, Katy, was born in a blizzard on Dec. 23. They were all born at night, and I was glad I had put the chains on. No doctor was going to get out and drive 5 miles in the snow like Dr. Herman did.

Statesville’s weather can be capricious. One Christmas Day around 1980, the temperature was 65 degrees, and the kids played outside without coats.

In 1994, the whole state was snowless and the ski slopes around Boone only had artificial snow.  That was the year I hosted a foreign exchange student from the Czech Republic. He thought our snow was pitiful.

A few years later, we had so much snow that it built up on the roof of our office in the Citizens Saving and Loan.

I got to the office by walking up 30 inches of snow on the sidewalk in front of the old Long’s Hospital and found there was no heat in the office.

I went outside and saw that about a foot of snow had slid off the roof covering the heat pumps.