Snowbound at Mortgage Manor

By Don Shearon First Published February 27, 1976That's how last Friday night's blizzard left us; isolated and without electricity.Now, this sort of situation can have certain plus and minus considerations. On the plus side, it offered a perfectly good excuse to remain in bed until daylight, a luxury denied ourselves over an extended period. On the minus side, the uncomfortable reality of shivering beneath a light-weight, inoperable electric blanket in an unheated house.With the dawn came another minus side problem: How to brew coffee with no means of heating the water. Picture, if you can, the Lady at Our House taking the chill off water, one cup at a time, over a lighted candle. The brew wasn't exactly steaming hot, but it was drinkable.The small measure of body heat generated by the warmish coffee was dissipated rapidly by cold milk poured over a bowl of dry cereal, accompanied by an untoasted slice of bread from a refrigerated loaf.Iced-over windows didn't permit clear visual contact with the outside world. It was like trying to peer through heavily frosted glass.One tiny open spot gave a glimpse of our sunken driveway, always a great snow-catcher. The white stuff had drifted level, some 4 ½ feet at its deepest point.While I don't know that Our Lady had any immediate plans to go anywhere, the mere sight of our blocked driveway triggered an instant case of acute cabin fever. She began to pace, dreaming up ways of both keeping warm and passing time. Wearying of solitaire, and having read the newspapersthrice over, Our Lady suddenly hauled out a screwdriver, pliers and other assorted paraphernalia. She began dismantling our temporarily idled toaster, which she claims hasn't operated properly for some time.She had read somewhere, in a column of “things your mother never taught you,” a way to adjust the toaster and thus cure what she thought ailed it.It is fortunate that a toaster doesn't have as many parts as a clock. This enabled her to have fewer pieces left over when she reassembled the machine. She managed to get the thing back together, but refused to plug it into the power source. That's my job, she insists, not trusting her own craftsmanship.I didn't bother to remind her that electricity wasn't flowing into Mortgage Manor anyway. Even if it had been, I wouldn't have plugged that gadget in, not for all the china in Dresden. With a snow-packed driveway, we couldn't have escaped nor could the fire laddies have reached us.Later, with an escape route clear, the toaster was tested and we learned why her mother hadn't taught her that adjustment trick: It doesn't work too well.

Not My Type

Frederic Wrigley

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