Ice, Ice, Baby!

Sometimes there are events in our lives that test our will and force us to draw strength from deep down inside ourselves to be able to endure, survive and live to reflect back on them years later. The other day I drove past a shotgun style house, where I spent the winter of ‘85 and it was there that I faced the coldest winter of my life.

I was renting back then, employed but not making much more than minimum wage. So, I suppose I felt fortunate to be living where all bills were paid, inclusive in the monthly rent and my landlord owned and occupied the house next door. Paycheck to paycheck is how I lived back in the day. What it cost to live there was just about all I could afford then and in the winter of 1985 temperatures often dipped into the “teens”. Gas heaters (since banned for use in homes) provided the only means of staying warm in that house. I would cover all the windows with plastic to try to minimize the cold air that blew in through every crack in that old house and continued to come up through the floor. Imagine coming home from work one day to discover that the electricity and the gas had been turned off because the bill had not been paid. It was then that I discovered that the landlord had moved out from the house next door, without so much as a “goodbye, see ‘ya later or anything like that. Since all this happened too many years ago for me to honestly say for sure that both gas and electric service was stopped on the same day (probably not), at some point, I had neither and could not afford to pay to have service restored. With daylight hours shortened, it meant that I came home to a dark and cold house every day. Looking back, I really don’t know how I made it through those nights. I walked around the house in chilly darkness, behind a cloud of warm air when I exhaled and didn’t even have the ability to cook. I wore several layers of clothes around the house and covered myself with as many blankets as I could, put a few under me on the mattress to block the cold air that came up through the floor and through the mattress. I pulled the blankets over my head and prayed for sleep to come. Showers were painful. The water was ice cold, felt like needles against my skin but I had to force myself to step under the spray anyway. It was a nightmare and I didn’t have time to feel sorry for myself. Hell wasn’t “fire and brimstone” but ice cold water, an ice cold house and darkness as well. There seemed to be no escape. I cannot recall how many days I survived this situation but my way out came in the form of a notice of eviction attached to my front door telling me that the sheriff’s office was seizing the house. Foreclosure. I was being evicted and had just a few days to move out. The house next door that the landlord abandoned was also included in the seizure. Now what? What was I going to do? Where would I go? How, under those circumstances did I think that eviction was worse than coming home to that cold, dark house? Well, it’s been said that when one door closes another door opens and that all things happen for a reason. Fortunately, this chapter of my life did have a happy ending because I heard about another house that was available and jumped at the chance to move. THAT story ended BUT another one was born at the house on Lewis Avenue. A story for another time.