[Alpines] OFF TOPIC SNOW.....

[jim williams]

Back in the 60s I drove VWs. On the cold nights you had to put the car in
whatever gear you needed to get going or the cold oil would not allow it to go
into gear. I also can remember putting a space heater in the car at night.
First thing in the morning plug it in. Ready heat. Too young to care about
fires!


Jim Williams  Lewisburg, West Virginia



--- On Fri, 12/18/09, Jan Eyerman <jan.eyerman at usa.net> wrote:

> From: Jan Eyerman <jan.eyerman at usa.net>
> Subject: OFF TOPIC SNOW.....
> To: "jim williams" <sportsix63 at yahoo.com>, lehtinen.lauri at kolumbus.fi,
alpines at autox.team.net, jacranwell at aol.com, "Tony Somebody"
<achd73 at yahoo.com>
> Date: Friday, December 18, 2009, 10:48 AM
> My family comes from upstate New
> York.... aka "The snow belt" or "300 inches
> of snow per winter".  For many years I could not
> understand why auto makers
> made cars painted white- I never ever saw anyone local buy
> a white car... they
> "disappeared" in the snow and would get hit by snow
> plows.  We had a "party"
> drive-way between two houses-2 families in each house so
> about 6 cars, when
> heavy snow (several feet) were expected we parked our cars
> bumper to bumper in
> the driveway to minimize digging them out in the
> morning.  We also used to put
> "tenner toppers"-orange plastic balls on the top of the
> radio antenna so we
> could find the car in the snow.  Somewhere I have a
> picture of what appears to
> be a field of snow with a bunch of orange balls sitting on
> top of the
> snow-those are our buried cars.  Everybody put a
> hundred watt light bulb next
> to the carb and on top of the intake manifold in addition
> to engine block
> heater (or radiator hose heater or dipstick heater) to help
> start the car in
> the morning.  If you had an old car that was really
> hard to start, you drained
> the oil at night and brought it in the house to keep it
> warm and then poured
> it in in the morning. Especially if 30 below zero was
> forecast.  We used to
> drive on "hardpack" all winter and did not see the road
> surface again until
> spring.  I also remember the "jingle" of snow chains
> all winter.  You couldn't
> go much over 25MPH with them though, but with seriously
> snow covered roads you
> really couldn't safely go much faster. 
>
> I now live in New Jersey where below zero temperatures are
> rare and a foot of
> snow is alot.  Of course I also have a heated two car
> garage under the house
> (I would have loved that back in 1960 in Herkimer,
> NY). 
>
> Thanks for bringing back those memories for me.
>
> Jan Eyerman