While living in upstate [Redbud] New York, or the snow belt, this Southern girl learned a few things about winter weather.
For starters, I learned one should have more than a pair of extra socks to wear if one finds themselves stranded in a sudden, unexpected snowstorm, as once happened to me.
I was leaving work one night at the end of a week where the temperatures had all been in the sixties to find over a foot of snow already on the ground, with more falling.
I trudged to my car to find not an ice scraper or a pair of gloves inside, nope, I found a pair of my husband’s old socks mercifully forgotten in the trunk.
Having no shame, I pulled those socks over my shaking digits and scraped the windshield of my car with my fingers as best as I could because I was going home.
Another lesson I learned was never let your car break down on Christmas Day in New York.
To say our car did not take to the great white north is an understatement. Our car hated being there and to prove it to us would occasionally have toddler melt downs over its unsafe driving conditions leaving us stranded, often in several feet of snow, along northern roadways.
I learned no one ever stops.
I learned that even on Christmas Day, a day usually set aside by the rest of the nation to practice acts of brotherly goodwill and cheer, no one will stop to see if an unattended female needs assistance. An unattended female stuck on the side of the road with no heat in several feet of snow, I might add.
One particularly scary lesson hammered home to me while living in New York is carbon monoxide is real.
Yes, just because you cannot see it, taste it, or smell it, carbon monoxide is not imaginary.
I know this because one night, during, you guessed it, a “white out” or what we in the south would call “an actual blizzard,” I was awakened to the steady, low beeping of our lone, valiantly working carbon monoxide detector.
At the time, we were not a family who truly took this unseen danger seriously. We had only one detector actually working in the house and that one could barely be heard as its batteries were apparently massively depleted.
By the grace of God, it was working, and He woke me up so I could hear it and I then turned to my husband and attempted to badger him awake.
After some time, I was able to convince my husband to do more than pat me on the head and tell me, “I don’t hear anything, just go back to bed.”
With him finally awake and engaged, it was quickly determined there was a beeping and it was coming from our carbon monoxide detector.
He immediately went out, yes, that means outdoors into the snow, to check the exhaust pipe on the roof, which extends a good 2-3 feet above the roof, only to discover he couldn’t even see it!
The snow had completely covered and clogged the exhaust pipe, flooding our home with deadly gas while we slept.
My husband hustled back inside to insist that I, and our infant daughter, rush outside into the 12 below zero frozen tundra while he ran around opening all the doors and windows to our home.
According to the readings the carbon monoxide level was over three times the acceptable limit.
Obviously, we could have and probably should have died.
So, there are actually two morals to this cautionary winter tale and the first is to always make sure you have a carbon monoxide detector with working batteries.
And the second is don’t live in a frozen tundra. You’re welcome!