Tondeleo: I just got off of the phone with Doc. He was telling me that cold weather had finally hit Southern Maryland and how he had been over to a friend’s house to check on her to make sure they kept warm.
Doc: Yeah, Tondy, I been over to Estelle and Vince’s all day. With that weather drop, they been freezin’ at night. Their wood heater ain’t no good; it’s gotten old and rusted out. Right now, he ain’t got no money. They’re just doin’ without heat. So I been over there helpin’ ‘em make sure they make it through the winter.
I brung over some plastic what I got at the Home Depot and stapled that over all the windows on the inside, to keep the wind out, but let the sun in…
Tondeleo: Like home made double glazing?
Doc: I don’t know what that is, but yeah, I guess…
Be fore we did that, we stuffed rags in around the edges where they had cracks. That helps, too. And we put a piece of old rug along the bottom of their doors. He cut it into strips and I doubled them over and nailed ‘em to the bottom, to keep the wind out.
Be fore we did that, we stuffed rags in around the edges where they had cracks. That helps, too. And we put a piece of old rug along the bottom of their doors. He cut it into strips and I doubled them over and nailed ‘em to the bottom, to keep the wind out.
We took some old blankets an’ quilts an’ put them behind the curtains on the north side windows, because the sun doesn’t come in on that side anyway. That will keep a lot of the heat in. A set of heavy curtains can block a draft. On the south side windows, we cut back the tree branches so the sunlight could get in. And you want to keep the curtains open when the sun is shinin’ so the heat will come inside.
Here’s somethin’ we done at our bungalow a long time ago. Planted cedar trees along the north side of the house, to block the wind, and regular trees what lose their leaves along the south side. In the Summer, those trees give us shade and keep it cool. But in the Winter, they lose their leaves so the heat can get in.
We put old newspapers what she’d been collectin’ and laid them under all the rugs. She got about three layers of rugs down, to keep it warmer. She gets ‘em at thrift shops and yard sales.
Another thing they done was got another dog. They gots about four of ‘em now. They all keep warm by stayin’ together all the time. I THINK she lets ‘em in the bed with her when he’s workin’ on a job what takes him away for a few days. ! I mean she ain’t got no ‘lectric blanket, so what else can she do? It keeps her warm and alive and helps those dogs, too. Plus they keep each other company.
One thing we all do down here in the winter, is we go visit folks what gots heat! Some of my friends got pretty good heaters, and we go to their houses to play music and sing as much as we can in the winter. You can’t work much with it getting’ dark so early anyway, so what are you gonna do? We go to church, too, cause it’s pretty warm. And that’s a good thing to do anyway, and we play music after church a lot of time.
When it’s cold out an’ you don’t have any heat, you can go to McDonalds and hang out there, or Burger King. The Post Office is always heated and you can go in there at night. That’s what we got up in Bryans Road. And there’s the library during the day. You can go to the laundromat and sit in there for a little while.
Another cheap way to keep warm is to ride the Van Go bus all day. Costs like a buck. It's heated and there's always someone to talk to, or you can get dropped off at the mall. It's warm, too.
Church is a good place to go for heat on Sunday mornings, Sunday nights and Wednesday nights. it's out of the cold, and some of them serve free coffee, and there's some nice people to meet at the churches.
At night, you just got to bundle up. Put on long johns, extra socks, a hat and sweat shirts, whatever you got. Bring the cats and dogs to bed with you if that’s all you got.
If you can, you can make a wood heater outta an old oil drum and then get some pipe to make a stovepipe to go out through a window pane. But we didn’t do that at Estelle and Vince’s. But that’s what I done in my shop. And if you ain’t got a chainsaw, you can do what a lot of people do, which is collect old pallets and burn them. One of my friends got a pellet stove. My other friend, Big Dave tells people he gots a PALLET stove!
But basically you just got to burn what you can to get warm and stay warm. It ain’t not good bein’ cold, that’s for sure. And it don’t do your guitars any good to get too cold neither. When it’s that cold, you can’t play ‘em anyway. I cain’t hardly play when my hands is warm. When they get cold, I sound even worse. And I ain’t room to GET much worse!
