Working on a '64 VW in an Un-insulated Garage on the Coldest Night of the Year

And now for something completely different. Though 'work' is in the title.

Avocation: an activity that a person does as a hobby outside their principal occupation.

I wouldn't exactly call it a hobby, I'd call it my druthers. Details to follow on this topic. For now, a piece of the memoir-in-progress, a piece that mainly foreshadows 'stuff' (if I told you I'd have to...) and introduces the amazing Maureen Margaret Keefer.

Nineteen eighty-three. Four months pregnant in Northern New York in February. My husband of a year and a half doesn’t protest when I set off on foot alone down the icy Route 11 to get us something warm to eat from closest restaurant, the meat and potatoes eatery, Eben’s Hearth. Perhaps more importantly, I think nothing of it either, despite having miscarried very early on during my first and unplanned pregnancy shortly after our wedding. I am healthy and hearty, and I know how to dress for this. Thermal underwear and down, always the hat, gloves and scarf, and high-cut, insulated, waterproof boots. I have skiied the icy trails of Whiteface and Gore mountains, black diamond trails to go with the white crystals on my eyebrows, the ends of my hair and up my nose.

Potsdam is in the middle of a deep freeze, three weeks of 30 degrees below zero. The highway is treacherous, and I make my way through two and a half feet of snow banks along the side. There is not a car in sight, but I’m careful to watch for trucks, as it is a major truck route. The first step up supports my weight. Every other I plunge through the bank. I hobble on like Peg Leg with a missing peg. When I arrive at the restaurant, I am pleased that it is open. I am, not surprisingly, the only one there aside from our friend Red Beard, the bouncer-cum-artist-cum-cook.

“What the hell are you doing out tonight?” he asks with his usual gruffness. I was always a little afraid of him. I have known him since I was a freshman in college and he was the bouncer at the Whiskey One. Six feet tall with a generous belly, red hair and a long red beard, Red Beard cuts an imposing figure. He had no trouble handling the drunken college students on dollar pitcher night, back when the drinking age was 18.

“We’re fixing the car up at Ingles garage.”

“When are you going to get rid of that piece of crap?” he asks. I smile. He has an extremely good point about our little love bug, white with a blue stripe just like Herbie, but I don’t take it. I pull out seven dollars, every penny we have, and search the menu for the most for the least. Soup. It’s always soup, isn’t it?

“How much for two containers of soup?”

“How much you got?” I can never tell if he’s serious or joking.

He ladles out the soup into containers, and starts packing a bag for me. A few extra rolls please. Plastic ware, yes. Napkins please. And three more pats of butter.

John and our friend Mike are working on our ‘64 VW in an un-insulated garage on the coldest night of the year. Mike is replacing a thrown rod, one of the many major malfunctions in the vehicle at which John and I have already thrown the entire sum of our wedding gifts, given by family mainly, to help get us started in our life together. In the back of the shop there is a homemade barrel-shaped woodstove crammed to the brim and burning as hot as it can possibly go. There is no seal to speak of on the stove door, and you can see the flames shooting up through the cracks.

When I return, we stand around the fire eating the now tepid split-peas. Deep inside, Maureen Margaret stirs. I haven’t begun to really feel her movements, but I know she is there. When I am alone, I sing her the ABC song—“next time won’t you sing with me?”

I want to literally get on top of the stove, this is how cold I am. This is how little the fire is affecting the sub zero air around us, or more urgently, the deep down of my increasingly cold and tired bones. It doesn’t matter how many ski moguls I’ve jumped or how close I stand, I cannot for the life of me get warm. I want my bed. I want home. But it will be a long time before I get any relief.