BUNDLING TO CONSERVE HEAT

All this week the residents and businesses in Vancouver have been sending messages to the CBC radio news room to complain about the problems resulting from the unusual daily snowstorms. One lady needing groceries was looking through the window from her seventeenth floor condo home. She sees her car still blocked in a snowbank. At least she still has heat in her home. There have been power outages for hours at a time in some areas. Unusual cold weather patterns further north are having similar problems as well with a layer of ice on the roads and sidewalks. When another snowstorm covers the ice the result is dangerous slippery driving conditions. It's the same when trying to keeping upright when walking. There isn't enough snow removal equipment to handle it all.

It just might be a good idea to ask some of our grandparents for some tips about how they handled winter challenges and conserved heat in the old days. For example there is a knock at the door of a one room prairie home. A young man has spotted the dim coal oil light of this home. He has heard about a nearby coal mine where he might be able to get a job. The darkness has fallen, he is cold and lost and needs a place to sleep for the night. They have two beds, one for the farmer and his wife and the other for their teen age daughter. The baby sleeps with the parents at all times for warmth and to satisfy his need for warm meals at all hours.

The temperature has dropped and it's too cold to sleep in a haystack if he could even find one in the dark. "We can help you with bundling then," the farmer says. They have three quilts. The guest and the farmer's daughter are each wrapped separately with a quilt and belted singly. This conserves heat and keeps them warmer than if they did have two beds. The cooking stove gets an extra lump of coal to keep the fire banked through the night. That way everyone will sleep better and find no opportunity for "spooning." He might be thinking of a future Sunday afternoon, visiting this same family and spooning with the farmer's daughter, having a chance to hold hands and hoping to have the nerve to ask her father for his daughter's hand in marriage.