As a boy growing up in 1976, I had no idea of the worries that gripped the adults around me during the month of November.
Who to vote for, and will it matter? Do we have enough seasoned wood, and how much will home fuel oil bills be this winter?
Will the pipes freeze where I made those hasty repairs in August? Should I put on the studded tires soon?
Did I clean the chimney flue last spring? Are all the storm windows seated properly…I still feel a draft?
All kids have worries, but these were concerns I guess I never really paid attention to as our house was getting prepped for the long winter ahead.
To me it just meant extra chores like moving firewood, holding the bottom end of a storm window when my dad passed it out of the garage loft, or hovering over the vent from the furnace in our kitchen hallway to hear when the boiler turned on.
I found that my friends’ families handled their concerns about the upcoming winter differently than mine.
What my parents might consider to be normal were deemed severe by others.
For example, if some of my friends were to touch their thermostat, out came a large belt to break the habit and some blood vessels on their rear ends.
Another had so much wood stored it would take a winter apocalypse to use it up.
A neighbor’s father rolled insulation over most of the windows.
He closed out all the light and made the entire house feel as if daylight would not return till June.
But I was not witness to these chronically stressed-out well-meaning parents at my home.
I suppose we experienced just the right amount of stress…or perhaps my parents just managed it a little better.
My own November concerns were far too numerous to list, but foremost was the worry of the first report card being sent home.
Next was, would my father get the largest deer with the most scoreable antler points?
I never avoided my worries; I noted them, expressed them, and then moved on.
I can still remember asking my friend Eddie, “Wouldn’t the world be great if there were no report cards?”
“Well, then our parents would just find somethin’ else to get mad at us about,” he said.
You see, Eddie was a glass half-full kind of worry person, just like me.
My last worry that early November was whether or not we would soon have enough snow for me to try out my new plastic toboggan.
I was pretty sure that worry would disappear soon.
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller,
lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com