Cold to the Bone

We're in a cold snap here. The weather turned cold the past week and there isn't any end in sight yet. On Wednesday, November 16, records fell: 54 below zero Fahrenheit at Manly Hot Springs, 41 below in Fairbanks International Airport.

This post card is my favorite local cold weather image. There are lots of these hearty souls walking the streets of Fairbanks this time of year dressed up like spaceman. This particular individuals face mask sort of looks like a blue pig snout or maybe a Yetti. It's a great picture illustrative of the ice fog and extremes of dress Fairbankians use to keep warm.

I remember the first Thanksgiving my wife and I spent in Healy, Alaska. We woke up and the temp was pegged at 49 below and the propane wouldn't flow. We ended up taking the turkey we were supposed to cook to our friends house to cook it there. They kept their propane tank propped up against the house and wrapped in a thermal blanket. The heat coming off the house was enough to keep the propane liquid and flowing. I know this is a perverse wish but I kind of wish that it would have been 50 below that year just so I can say some day, "I remember the day it was 50 below on Thanksgiving morning..." I guess I'll have to settle for saying, "I remember the day it was 49 below in the 49th state."

Landing a Big One

My high school friend, Rick, has a great sense of humor and wrote on the back of this old Curt Teich linen postcard, "Here's a photo of me catching a big salmon last week. He put up a mighty fight too!"

His fish story did catch the vernacular of the 20Th-century postcard greeting. How many folks back home were bamboozled or humored by stories of whoppers caught and eaten in obscurity on vacation in the back woods.? I would guess more than a few.

Though the old Curt Teich postcards were not of the great quality of color cards printed in Germany and France in the first half of the 20th-century, they do have a rich watercolor tone all their own. Looking at the image, I can feel the vast quietude of the water, timeless atmosphere and the euphoric mood that is a part of the fishing experience on large lakes. Someday I'll tell Rick about the summer when I was ten and landed the giant Sturgeon that bit our boat's oar in half.

Postcrosser and amateur photographer, Christine, sent this wonderful postcard image of her nephews eating watermelon. I think this one beats the usual kids in the bathtub. Then again, all baby pictures are like all babies, cute from the get go.