A Cold Weather Story

             In 1980, we had just purchased our house in McBride, my temporary employment at the Forest Service had stopped, and I needed to find a job.  I was able to get employed at Far West Cedar, a company that split cedar logs and manufactured cedar fence posts and rails, for rail fencing.  I was fortunate to get one of the safer jobs in the mill:  I ran the machine that drilled the holes that held the rails in the fence posts.  

            The winters I worked at Far West were brutal, because the large metal quonset hut building where we worked was unheated, and when it got cold, it made for a long miserable day.  Here is one cold day’s experience I had while working at the Far West Cedar Mill:

    Toward the end of January of 1981, McBride experienced blast of Arctic air.  One morning when I woke and got dressed to go to work, our thermometer read -30° F.  Nevertheless, the car started and I drove to work and when I arrived, the air was frigid and still. Surprisingly, the thermometer that hung outside the Far West office showed that the temperature was -48°F.  It seemed strange that thermometers showed that much difference.

    It felt like a march of doom as I plodded through the snow toward the mill door, knowing that the unheated building would not offer any more warmth than the frigid outside air, but I rationalized that maybe manhandling  the heavy fence posts to and from the drilling machine would exercise my muscles and keep me warm.  

            Once inside, I shuffled over to my station and turned on the drill.  I lifted the first post into position on the drilling platform, pulled back on the lever to lower the rack of drills onto the fence post, but as soon as the drills began to penetrate the wood, one of the drill bits snapped off.  

    That put an end to the drilling.  I marched over to the office and reported the break to Bob the foreman, and he told me go back and run the rail trimmer.  When I pressed the button that turned on the rail-trimming machine it too, immediately broke.  I trudged back over to the office and reported that too, to Bob, who immediately pressed his lips together as he shook  his head.  I wasn’t disappointed to hear him tell everyone that it was just too cold to work, and that everyone should go home.

    That evening our thermometer dipped to -35°F but the Department of Highways thermometer was reading -50° F.  

Our house is located on the mountain slope, so is higher in elevation than McBride, which is sits on the valley bottom.  Cold air is heavier and it sinks and lies in lower land, so maybe that creates the difference in temperatures.

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