Coldest Christmas Ever

 Our coldest Christmas ever, according to AI, occurred in 1983, when the official high temperature was 17 and the low zero.

 The cold weather slipped up on us. We had been lucky on the weather through November and December and were still cutting collards as the days counted down to Christmas.

 Just a few days before Christmas, we started cutting collards from a patch on McBride Road, just east of my parents’ house. It was chilly but bearable when we started.

 Ordinarily, after an hour or two it would warm up and we could shed a jacket and keep right on going. This time was different.

 I don’t recall any weather forecast predicting colder weather, but by about 9:30 it was getting colder by the minute.

 We decided to stop cutting and start loading truck. Big Bill McLucas stopped by and helped us load. I remember he had on a big overcoat, one that hung down below the knees and looked like something a businessman would wear.

 Joanne took Artie Mae Gooden and the rest of our helpers home, and Bill and I got our irrigation pump started and wet down the load. (You couldn’t get away with putting pond water on collards today, but back then no one gave it a second thought.)

 We usually delivered to John Shipp Produce at the Atlanta State Farmers Market in Forest Park around 10 p.m. When I got there that night it was well below freezing. Another grower, Mr. Spears from down around Tifton, was there ahead of me, but there wasn’t much happening on the dock.

 Tom Meeks, who ran the night shift at Shipp’s, had experienced a medical emergency. Carl Williams, the owner of Shipp’s, soon arrived to take Tom’s place.

 His first move was to give the dock workers a few shots from a bottle of liquor. I assume he meant for it to fortify them for the work ahead, but they were moving much slower than usual.

 Mr. Spears and I crowded around an old upright heater on the dock, but we couldn’t get warm at all.

 Since we’d only cut 60 dozen bunches or so, I decided to unload my own collards. When I picked up the first two bunches about six or eight more came with them. The top layers had frozen together.

 I got them separated and started stacking them on pallets. The further down in the pile I got, the water hadn’t frozen, so I could unload them like usual.

 The problem was that I was getting wetter – and thus colder – by the minute. Finally I got them unloaded, got a check and headed home in our 1969 Ford pickup.

 I had taken the thermostat out of the engine back in the summer, so the engine was running exceptionally cold, which meant that there was no heat coming out the vents.

 I figured I’d better gas up on the way home, so I stopped at the all-night Jim Wallace gas station north of Riverdale.

 I had intended to fill the tank, but I was so cold and wet I hung the pump up after $7, paid the clerk and headed home.

 I remember turning off Ga. 85 onto 92, and driving as fast as I dared trying to get home so I could get out of those wet clothes and get warm.

 When I finally got home and in the bed, it seemed to take hours to stop shivering. I think it went down to around five degrees that night and didn’t even get back to 20 the next day before going back to zero on Christmas Day.

 Somewhere along the way our power went off and it was about as cold in the house as it was outside.

 Joanne, Tammy and I spent that Christmas living in the warmest, east-facing room in the house, warmed with a kerosene heater my brother gave us.

 Our church cancelled the Christmas Eve candle-light service, so we had our own, reading the Christmas story from the Bible by flashlight.

 The cold weather and lack of power led to our water pipes breaking in numerous places under the house.

 My cousin, the late Bill Harp, lived across the road at the time, and when it finally started warming up he came and helped me crawl around under the house and solder joint after joint until we had running water again. That’s the kind of favor you never forget.