It could be worse. It could be -45°.
That was my first thought when I scrolled through Facebook and saw the low temperatures my friends, both near and far, were posting. Curious, I checked the local temperature on my phone.
“It’s -21°,” I told my husband.
He shook his head. “That’s cold.”
“It could be worse. It could be -45°.”
We silly grinned at each other as we remembered the stupidest thing we ever did in the coldest weather of our married lives.
It was a February Sunday in 1982.
We were a young and foolish.
We’d been married for 4 years.
We lived in Camp Crook, South Dakota.
Someone called to say church had been cancelled because it was -45°. I wanted to know what -45° felt like. The inner door worked without a hitch, but the screen door barely moved. It wasn’t frozen shut, but the lubricant in its push/pull mechanism had congealed. It took some muscle to open it. I poked my head out for maybe a second and pulled it right back in. -45° is cold. Really cold.
But not cold enough to say no when our friend Craig called. “Liz and I are going out to eat in Spearfish. Want to come?”
“It’s -45°,” we said.
“We’ll warm up the car,” they said. “We’re not leaving until noon. It’ll be warmer then.”
They was right. It was only -30° when we crawled into Craig and Liz’s car. The sun was shining. The car was toasty. Dinner was tasty, and we all returned home safely. So why do I say the trip was the stupidest thing we’ve ever done? Consider the following details:
Camp Crook is 100 miles from Spearfish.
There are only 2 towns between where we lived and where we were going.
I was 5 months pregnant.
That’s why I know it was 1982.
Now do you see why it was the stupidest thing we ever did?
Then again, it’s a shared memory that makes us grin and say, whenever the temperature dips into the double digits below zero, “It could be worse. It could be -45°”
Sign up to receive website updates and See Jane Run! book news on Gravel Road’s home page right under the picture of–you guessed it–the gravel road.
