It Used to Be Colder

“It Used to Be Colder”

A thought captures me. I keep coming back to it. I must have been in fourth or fifth grade. It was somewhere between Halloween and Christmas, and I was at my grandmother’s house. Her old wood stove was full of freshly split white pine. I know that because my brother and I split it. We chopped the pine logs effortlessly into quarters. The sweetgum logs, on the other hand, had twisted knotty fibers. They fought us with every axe swing, zapping our strength and confidence. The pine was a welcomed chore because it rewarded our efforts with clean, sticky firewood.

Next to us, the field of dying broom-sedge danced on the autumn wind as we split log after log. The air had a cold sharpness. The scent of woodsmoke tickled the back of our throats. I can’t escape that smell and temperature combination. It brings me right back to that era, to that wood pile. I remember how my grandmother’s front door sounded when it closed. I’m more concerned now that I don’t have the words to describe the rattling, shaking sound it made as it slammed each time. The door, that house, and my grandparents no longer exist.

I know people debate climate change for some reason or another, but I remember it used to be colder. We don’t have winter in the Piedmont of North Carolina anymore. I recall seeing snow once in early October at Pilot Mountain some twenty years ago. Big fat flakes fell all around us. They melted on impact, but it still snowed. The past few years here have barely even gotten cold. The only winter weather we got dusted my backyard for about an hour this past March. It used to be colder.

The winters of the ’80s and ’90s were colder. We would sled for hours wearing doubled-up sweatpants and puffy jackets. The dark-eyed junco snowbirds would hop laboriously through powdered snow drifts under the feeders to protest the cold. I can’t remember the last time we had snow worth sledding. The last time I split wood was just for fun—for my outdoor fire pit. Times were different back then, and the need to fuel our home with split lumber seems to have fallen by the wayside.

The memories of those colder days still captivate me. We were bundled up as we split those logs. My brother, sister, and I loaded our arms with dirty chunks of firewood and stacked them next to an old wood stove my grandfather built. He fabricated that high-backed metal stove a generation earlier out of scrap steel. It had three legs, and the one centered on the front had a foot shape cut out of steel to stabilize it. I always thought that was a whimsical touch. My grandfather was funny like that. He made that woodstove sometime before taking a sabbatical from his wife and kids. It was still the only heat in that house years later when he returned. One day, he loaded all his meager belongings into an old car and fishing boat and headed to Florida to start a new life, leaving his wife and kids in the rearview.

My grandfather grew up as an only child in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. His father moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, during my mom’s childhood. There came a point where it felt helpless, or hopeless, for my grandfather to remain in North Carolina with a failing marriage and the responsibilities of fatherhood. So, he just disappeared one day. I have always wondered why he left my mom and uncles, but people sometimes do the unexplainable because it’s just the best they know to do.

He eventually came back home when his father, his last living relative, died. It was as if nothing had happened; he just showed back up almost two decades later, when I was in first grade. We did get to visit him once down in Florida, and he caught cane toads with us and took us fishing for flounder. Those are very fond memories for me. He was dissonance personified. He could make you laugh until your sides hurt if he was in a good mood. If something upset him, he’d flip a switch and cut you off at the knees with the sharpness of his tongue. We called him Pawpaw.

I never saw my pawpaw without a crinkled red pack of Winston cigarettes in the front pocket of his mechanics shirt or an old, tattered red flannel with grease stains all over it. He always had one of those cigarettes hanging from his lips and a can of Old Milwaukee or some other cheap beer in his hands. Sometimes—to trick the law and my grandmother—he’d disguise his beer can as something else. I saw him cut the top and bottom off of a Mountain Dew can and slide it over his beer can, concealing its identity so he could drink and drive.

Ironically, I never saw him impaired from drinking. He was a pro. My brother and I would shrug our shoulders as we balanced our butts on janky toolboxes stacked in the back of his van. As we bounced down the road in that clunker, we felt fortunate to spend time with him. We were always happy when he decided to take us fishing or let us hang out at his shop, even if he relentlessly made fun of my lack of mechanical ability. It’s one of the few memories I have of him. You couldn’t help but love him, flaws, and all.

I don’t think his van had heat or air conditioning. It was one of those old shop vans from the 80s with heavy creaky doors and no windows in the back. Pawpaw worked as a mechanic for a forklift repair shop. Most of the tools that littered the back of that van had other men’s names on them. He justified his curious procurements by saying that he never took a whole set of tools, just a wrench or pair of pliers here or there, as they became “available.” His moral compass was off just a few degrees, but he always meant well.

My brother, Shawn, was his protégé in that they both had an unnatural gift with mechanical things. Pawpaw could fix anything. He would bring home any matter of half-broken go-karts and minibikes or dirt bikes and fix them just good enough so that my brother, sister, and I could ride them around the dirt roads in rural Randolph County.

Shawn spent many summer afternoons watching over Pawpaw’s shoulder as he used starting fluid to work magic on old, stubborn small engines. Pawpaw couldn’t understand why I couldn’t fix a motor to save my life. Where I failed with mechanics, I at least proved my mettle with snakes, another gift of his. He was always catching snakes or toads, often using them for a quick laugh with someone who had less of a love for the creepy crawlies.

Pawpaw was a consummate practical joker. He “acquired” a blue light from a broken forklift and rewired it to work with the cigarette lighter in that van. He would allegedly throw it up on the dash and drive up behind people on the roadways, giving them the shock of their lives. He would cackle and drive away after scaring his target. The van was matte white with a wide lateral blue stripe painted down the side. I imagine this made the ruse even more viable. This was (obviously) wildly illegal, but it was a different era—long before cell phones. Somehow, we were all more connected back then.

Despite his many faults, Pawpaw had a way about him that made you want to be in his presence. He was the life of the party, which made you feel lucky to exist in his world. You knew the moment was special when you got the rare opportunity to hear one of his impressions of Woody the Woodpecker or Earnest P Worrell. Even when he was angry at us, it was still funny, like when he would tell us to “go play in traffic” or “Here’s a screwdriver, go steal hubcaps off of moving cars.” You couldn’t help but laugh.

More than anything else, Pawpaw was a storyteller, and a good one at that. He’s been gone for almost a quarter century, and I still chuckle at his memory and influence on my life. I see some of his traits in my mom and uncles and our shared mannerisms; genetics are wild. I laugh at the thought of us spreading his ashes illegally because collectively, we knew that’s just what that shady old man would have wanted. Anyway, it used to be colder, and I need to go therapeutically split some wood. Hug the ones you love.

Charles Woodrow “Woody” Henkel 10/22/1939 - 01/05/2000