someone's gonna get a bargain

[glenn kangiser]

That's a better use for it, Don.

des, I'm not gonna touch that...in fact I'm gonna leave the room....

[desdawg]

That's a better use for it, Don.

des, I'm not gonna touch that...in fact I'm gonna leave the room....

No guts, no glory as they say on the ski slopes.
I forgot a buzzword for 2008. Systemic transparency and accountability are needed.

[glenn kangiser]

Yeah, and I need a great big bowl of beans.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Any of y'all wanna save yourselves the trouble of building a home and buy a really cute little cottage in Wisconsin??    I'll give you a deal.  It's only 15 minutes from Lake Michigan... and there is a private lake with swim beach only a block's walk away... nice big yard with five raised garden beds.

[glenn kangiser]

My uncle said it was so cold there they had to wet the bed to stay warm....

I just couldn't live like that...

[MountainDon]

Sounds nice enough, but I moved south because I developed an aversion to long cold winters, snow shovels, icy roads, salt on the roads, snow plows putting snow back across the driveway where I just shoveled it from, cars with frozen shock absorbers and rubber tires turned to steel, ... 

[apaknad]

hi HG,

i never did understand why you are leaving WI? i was just there and up in the NW area. it is a pretty area. i am from MI and it reminds me of northern mi. i know you want to build your own home but is this just a case of build your own w/ no mortgage? BTW, i like your posts and parsnips are my favorite root veggie. forgive me if i am sticking my big nose in an area you don't want to discuss.

[MountainDon]

IIRC, Homegrown complained about the cold all last winter they were there. I sympathized with her.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Apaknad,
 We moved because we just couldn't handle the long, cold, dark winters.  And, being a southerner, wearing a coat on the 4th of July is flat wrong!!!  We moved up there in early 2005 because DH had just finished graduate school and it was the first place he got a good job offer(though he got one about a week later in MI).  At that time, he didn't have his US citizenship yet, so he couldn't work for any of the companies in the south that require citizenship for security clearance.  Also, all of my family is in Oklahoma, and they are the only family DH has in the US, too.  It was crazy going three years without a date with my husband because we felt like we didn't know anyone well enough to leave our kids with them (the exceptions being the times my mom visited.)  My grandma is getting on up in years, and I wanted to move back closer to her so that my kids will remember her when they are older.  While we were up north, we lost my paternal great-grandma and paternal grandpa without my kids ever really getting to know them.  
 So, about a year or year and a half ago, DH started putting in apps at different places in the south.  He got offered several jobs before choosing this one.  He almost took one in Wichita, KS instead.  Glad he didn't take any in the Houston/Galveston area.  I was kind of hoping he'd get a job in Tulsa because I like the eastern part of the state so much, but in all honesty OKC is closer to home.  I'm glad he took the job he did.  
 NW Wisconsin is VERY beautiful.  We took a vacation up in that direction one time... of course, during the summer.  Don't think I could do it in the winter!!  The place we lived was pretty too, but was in the SE corner, about halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago.  We were both homesick for Oklahoma, though, and the kids were even worse off than us.  There weren't any little kids in our neighborhood, and the girls didn't have a lot of friends.  Seemed really hard to make friends there, perhaps because there were a lot of Chicago folks who seemed to still have a city mentality.  No one talks to strangers, so you stay a stranger for a long time.  We did have some good neighbors though, but we didn't really get to know any of them until our last year there.  Seemed like all our attempts at being friendly were met with suspicion or outright coldness.  The thing that killed me worse than the weather or the homesickness, though, was seeing my little girl sitting in the front window looking out at the blowing snow with tears running down her face and looking at me and asking, "Mom, when can we move to summer?"  My big girls are both solar powered and both seem so much happier since moving back home.  My husband, who grew up in Korea where the winters are bitterly cold and dry, sometimes says that he can't go back to Korea now that he's lived in Oklahoma, and likewise, he can't go back to Wisconsin.  As he put it, he thinks the tough folks that live in places like that can live there because that's what they know, but he thinks if they were to experience a mild southern winter all the way through, they'd have a hard time going back.  

And Glenn, as to wetting the bed to stay warm, we weren't desperate enough to try that, but my poor skinny little husband slept in a stocking hat all winter, as well as sweats and socks!  (sometimes even more than one layer of socks!!)  It wasn't so bad after we replaced the windows in the bedrooms, though.  Our second daughter HATED the cold.  I can remember bundling her up like the little kid on "Christmas Story" and still she would scream from the front door of the house to the car, and then when we got where we were going, from the car until we got back inside someplace warm.  She would just yell, "NO!! No! No!" and shake her head as if that was somehow going to make the cold go away.  It would have been funny had I not been thinking the same thing on the inside!!

If you've ever read the poem "The Cremation of Sam McGee" by Robert W. Service, I really sympathize with Sam.... I'd be the same way.  

[apaknad]

thanx HG for a look into your private life. i found it touching. i always like hearing about other people's trek through this earthly manifestation. good luck in your endeavors.

dan

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

So Dan, have you always lived in Michigan?  People we met in Wisconsin told us that if you were raised up there you just got used to the winters....
Another reason for leaving was the cost of living and the high property taxes... but that's another story altogether.  There are a lot of things I miss about it though... my grocery store up there was great, the apple orchards this time of year, etc.

[MountainDon]

People we met in Wisconsin told us that if you were raised up there you just got used to the winters....

I was born, raised and lived in Manitoba, Canada. I never did really enjoy winter weather, more so when I personally discovered that -30 degrees, and colder, is not a normal state of affairs everywhere in the months of December and January. Snow scenes can be pretty and the summers have wonderful weather. But I'm glad I met and married an American who led me south of the 45th parallel. 

[apaknad]

yes HT, except for a 2 yr. stint in the marine corps(california, vietnam, n. carolina). it's true, you do get used to the winters and there is a certain beauty to seeing everything clean and white on a cold frosty morn. it's the sloppy transitional periods that are a PITA. taxes and cost of living are pretty high here also but you balance that out with all the lakes(including the great lakes) and nature away from the cesspool cities(detroit,flint) and there are some plusses. that being said, i don't know if i'll stay here when i deal with mom's estate(she's 93 and has terminal cancer) but if i can't sell her house i may have to. all depends on the economy and i may be in a situation like yours. i would sell at a loss to build my own place in the country.

[desdawg]

Hey Dan I was in all of those places when in the USMC. I also did some time in Okinawa, the PI and Phu Bai along the way and added VA at the end of my time. I was at the Navy Brig in Norfolk (as a guard mind you). That was a trip.     I led a charmed life. That would have all taken place between 1967 and 1970 for me. Old guy here.

[apaknad]

hey Des, i was in okinawa also. 2 year stint in the corps. enlisted and volunteered for Nam. '66-'68(you are not THE old guy)

[StinkerBell]

I do not like the word "old"....Can we say "seasoned" instead?

[MountainDon]

Old is my age plus maybe 15-20.

62 here.

[MountainDon]

Age is actually more a state of mind, IMO.  Mostly I don't believe I am 62.  ( ...and a third). .... it simply can't be....   



Back 'then', one of the fall rituals was to cut a circular hole in a piece of cardboard and place it before the radiator. Even a 195 degree thermostat couldn't guarantee enough hot water for the heater in Dec-Jan.  My Land Cruiser came factory equipped with a spring loaded roll up "shade" in front of the radiator. There was a control pull cord inside under the dash. Way cool hot!!



Does anybody here remember "frost shields"? Or know what they are?




OK. Here ya'll go. A frost shield was a piece of clear plastic sheet that was applied to the inside of an automobile window as a 'storm window'. There was a thin air space formed between it and the window glass. They came in all sizes, from small enough triangular shapes that would fit on a vent wing window to those large enough to fit a rear window. The air space between the plastic and the glass insulated just enough to prevent frost from forming on the inside of the window. We'd have them on all side door glass as well as on the rear window.

Does anyone still doubt my dislikes for cold northern winters.... ?

The old '48 Ford truck on the farm also had them on the windshield as it didn't even have a decent heater let alone a defroster. They were glass though; with thin foam rubber gaskets glued to the 2 piece flat glass windshield.

On a motor trip to FL one winter ('67 Chevy Biscayne 2 door sedan with a 396 and three-on-the-tree... odd car    ), when asked by a kid in a full service  gas station what they were we told him they were bullet proof shields. I think he was impressed. 

[glenn kangiser]

hmm .... you guys are old.... I was class of '69  (HS)

In 1969, Don I worked at a full service 76 Union where we washed windows and checked oil.

[apaknad]

i defer to the lady, i am "seasoned"(well seasoned)

[apaknad]

I'd like you to show a little more respect for your elders Glen. Kids should be seen and not heard. I'd tell you to go stand in the corner but I don't think your house has any corners. (class of '65)

[glenn kangiser]

I have always had a problem with that, Dan.  Guess I had to be there...

[glenn kangiser]

i defer to the lady, i am "seasoned"(well seasoned)

Now you sound like a steak...

[desdawg]

hmm .... you guys are old.... I was class of '69  (HS)

In 1969, Don I worked at a full service 76 Union where we washed windows and checked oil.

Class of 1966 here.

[MountainDon]

... class of '64