Icicles
Looking back I seem to remember a lot of icicles hanging from the eaves of homes. I don’t see as many nowadays because of gutters and downspouts. Their size ranged from little fingerlings to ones that reached the ground from the second story. Some were thin, almost transparent as a window pane to those which needed to be smacked by a hammer to loosen them and to cause them to fall safely.
Icicles can be wonderfully beautiful, clinging to edges of waterfalls, creating another cascade of beauty at the sides of a winter stream. Those icicles mirror the natural beauty of the free-falling water.
One beautiful display of icicles I remember was an annual light show at a house about half way down the Three Mile Hill along Route 31 between the towns of Donegal and Laurelville, Pennsylvania. When the highway had more curves there was a small mobile home situated at the edge of a deep curve. The folks there used a large square of turkey wire hanging between two trees. Strings of outdoor colored lights were fastened to it before hosing it down with water. The water froze into sheets of ice. At night when the lights were lit, it glowed like a stained glass window.
Another icicle story happened while I was working at Frick Hospital Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania. One of the nurse managers complained all the time about being cold. Her office had been a patient room with its own bathroom. She would turn the heater on in the bathroom and in the office as soon as the weather began to chill outside. Walking into her office was like entering a blast furnace.
Outside, huge icicles would hang from the eaves of the hospital. I was working as the night shift supervisor and went outside breaking off a section. The icicle was ten inches thick at its base and extended to nearly six feet long at its pointed end. After turning off the heat in her bathroom, I stuck the thick end into the commode bowl standing the icicle up then closed the door. She was not a happy camper when she went into her bathroom. I did remove it to placate her, but it was worth her scolding to see her fuss.
Another story that isn’t quite an icicle story but occurred one year during deer hunting. It was very cold and the bottle of water I carried in the pocket of my hunting jacket froze. Several other hunters’ water did as well. We had to build a fire and place the bottles near the flames to thaw them. The fire was also nice place to warm our hands as we made rounds.