By: Neal Wooten
It sure is cold. We’ve had some very strange days this winter with the temps plummeting. I’ve left my water running at home and at the Depot Museum many nights. But as cold as it’s gotten, it still doesn’t compare to the coldest day of my life, a day I’ll never forget.
And no, it wasn’t in the 10 years I lived in Milwaukee; it was right here in good old Alabama. It was Christmas Eve 1983. I had graduated high school earlier that year, was attending Northeast Community College, and working at the Shell Car Wash on the north end of town.
We couldn’t open the car wash section that morning because the temps, with the wind chill factored in, was 40 below. No, that’s not a typo – 40 below. That didn’t stop people from pulling into that area expecting a wash, however. But the entire building was frozen shut. We had to put concrete blocks in the trashcans to keep them from blowing away. Only two of us worked that day, and we closed at 2 pm for the holiday.
At one point that morning a woman pulled up in her car and requested two quarts of Dixie Penn motor oil. This was a recycled oil, very thick and very cheap, so it was perfect for people whose cars used a lot of oil. It was my turn to leave the four heaters inside our little cashier building and brave the elements. I removed the oil cap, opened the first can of oil, and turned it up. Nothing.
I called for Shannon, the other employee, to come look. Neither of us could believe it. It was so cold the oil would not come out of the container. We had to sit the cans beside a heater for several minutes to get the oil warm enough to pour, and even then it looked like caramel going into the car.
As we were closing, an older man pulled into our lot and his car quit. We knew him. He was a regular who had artificial legs, whom the other kids at the carwash insensitively called Peg, and lived out of his car. He raised the hood and stood there without even a coat.
I was dying to get home to a warm house and bask in thVe Christmas spirit, but I feared he would not be safe with this cold and his car not running. So I stayed and helped him with his car. By the time we got it running, I had never been so cold in all my life. Never before and never since.
How many of you remember that extremely cold Christmas Eve in 1983?