Cold Awakenings

Scott sleepily pulled the covers under his chin as he fought the urge to drift happily back to dreamland. He didn't fight very hard. After a few moments he opened his eyes again and blinked against the morning light. He thought for a few seconds, wondering why it was so light outside. It wasn't usually light until after six or seven o'clock during the winter. He groggily turned towards his alarm clock. The time of 7:26 was clearly displayed in red, block letters.

An intense feeling of panic swept through the thirteen-year-old's chest as he power-rolled out of the lower bunk of the bed. He frantically threw his clothes on, all the time wondering how his family could have let him sleep so long and who was doing his barn chores if he was still in bed. He slipped his belt through the belt loops on his uniform pants as he barreled down the stairs. He opened the door at the bottom of the stairs and careened through the empty living room, towards the basement stairway door. He grabbed his boots from the shelf, not noticing how many boots were still there, and grabbed his blue coveralls from a nail protruding from a large post. 

He flew by the kitchen table and frantically attempted to slip into his coveralls, but found it hard to do so in his frenzied state.

“Scotty,” a voice interrupted the young man. “What are you doing?”

Scott stopped and looked around, surprised by the interruption. He had thought he was alone. As he turned towards the source of the voice, he noticed that he was actually pretty cold. He turned and looked across the kitchen table, towards the stove. Huddled around the open oven were his four siblings and his mother. They were sitting on a bench with their backs to Scott and their feet propped up on the open, oven door with a folded towel acting as a barrier between their feet and the door. The element in the bottom of the oven glowed orange and cast a strange light against the black interior of the electric oven.

“W-w-what is going on?” Scott shivered. “Why is it so cold in here? Am I in trouble for sleeping in?”

Christa smiled and shook her head as she answered. “You're not in trouble, sweetie,” She began. “You really should put on a sweatshirt, though. When your father and I woke up this morning, it was only forty-three degrees in the house. The gas went out last night. He tried to pull the pin but there wasn't enough pressure yet. He told me to let you guys stay in bed where it was warm. He should be finishing the chores soon enough.”

Scott nodded his head in understanding as he heaved a sigh of relief. The old farmhouse was heated with natural gas that was generated by an oil well on the property. This was good financially because the gas was provided to the family at no monetary cost. That's not to say there was no cost at all. The family paid for the free gas with mornings like this one. The gas pressure would occasionally drop below operating pressure and shut off over night. This would result in some cold awakenings until the pressure would build enough to fire their furnace. Until then, the family usually built a fire in the wood stove in the basement and turned the oven on to warm up the kitchen. The “pin” was the pressure regulator reset. Once the pressure built up to operating levels, someone would unscrew the cap and pull the pin with a pair of pliers to allow gas to flow back into the furnace.

Scott pulled a hooded sweatshirt over his torso and poured himself a cup of coffee. Rather than joining the family oven huddle, he grabbed a blanket and a book and made himself comfortable on the couch. As he read, he occasionally pushed his top lip out as far as it would go so as to resemble that of a monkey and exhaled through his nose. After a while, Kelsey came in and interrupted her brothers strange facial exercises.

“What in the world are you doing with your face?” she asked, her voice thick with ridicule.

“Um,” Scott stammered, surprised by the sudden interruption. “I'm warming up my nose. When I do that with my lip and breathe out through my nose, the air from my nose warms it up.”

“What?” Kelsey questioned with no small amount of uncertainty. “That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.”

“Don't knock it 'til you try it,” Scott replied as he turned back to his book.

“Wait,” his sister interrupted him again as she scrunched her upper lip against her nose and exhaled. “It does warm my nose up!”

“I told you,” Scott replied across the top of his Great Illustrated Classic. 

“Hey guys! Check this out!” Kelsey called out as she returned to the relative warmth of the kitchen stove.

She was in the middle of her nose warming instructions to the rest of the family when the head of the household walked through the kitchen. Dale stepped deliberately from one rug to the next, so as to keep the snow from his boots off of the linoleum floor, on his way to the basement. He was in the basement for about a minute before his family heard the furnace fan kick on and felt the warm air flowing from the registers. Cries of joy erupted from the kitchen and the living room as he returned to the ground level. He kicked his boots off at the top step and pulled his long, white, tube socks back up to his knees. He walked into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down on the couch, still wearing his coat.

“Well,” he announced to his frigid family. “We should be alright for the rest of the day at least.”