Keeping the cars brushed off
The cold with a bit of snow and “stuff” made Tuesday a nasty afternoon.
The streets of our village were quite thinned out, with almost no parked cars downtown and right out to the 41A blinker when I made my way a there bit after 5 p.m. Surprisingly, the driving was not really nasty. The coating of snow was a bit noisy, but it did not give much trouble. When I left the office, it certainly seemed that it was going to be just awful, as we had had a blast of super-cooled rain that froze on the car windows. It was hard to get them scraped until the defroster had loosened the ice on the glass. The side window ice seemed softer and cleared when first attacked, but the slanted windshield required quite a lot of heat to make any progress. The wind and cold rain did not improve my personal comfort as I worked on the window with my trusty plastic scraper.
I think my dad used to have a scraper that had a steel blade and a good wooden handle. He could get the ice to let go without damaging the glass by using care and precision. Ice storms were regular occurrences in Connecticut where I grew up and we became quite practiced at deicing windows.
My dad had connections at the American Brass Company tool rooms. The foremen were compatriots of his and he procured all the tool steel that was used across the whole company. If Sam Spalding needed a super ice scraper for his Hupmobile they made him one. Unfortunately, by the time dad left us, the super ice scrapers were all gone.
The defrosters on the current crop of automobiles seem to function better now than the ‘60s and ‘70s models did. Even so, starting with a cold window and car, it still seems to take a long time to thaw a build-up of ice from the windows. It is not pleasant standing around out in the weather, waiting for the windshield to start to yield to the heat. The big V-8 engines make lots of heat and there seems to be plenty available once the warm-up has occurred. A trusty piece of cardboard placed under the wiper blades can speed up your departure when you have been parked in icy conditions.
I have been very fortunate that I have had a garage available with my housing since 1959. The problem arises when I am on the job or at some event and the car has been sitting for many hours of snow or ice build-up. The best attack is to climb into the car, start it up, organize the airflow to blast the windshield, and wait for a little spot to start to show a bit of melt. This requires patience. You should just sit there and let the car warm up, then spring like a tiger with your trusty scraper and remove the offending ice. If you jump the gun and snow is blowing at you at about 10 to 15 mph, the glass won’t be warmed up enough to be removed efficiently. More importantly, you will be likely to get cold hands and feet.
We “snow belt” drivers are adept at brushing the snow off the car without dumping a significant load of snow on to the driver’s seat. Brushing it off before it melts is imperative and I think most of us are highly skilled at this endeavor. Most locals are also smart enough to have the sweepers and scrapers in the car and not on a shelf in the garage.
However, I’m sure that Finger Lakes Road Warriors have, on occasion, had to buy a new tool to get them home because the tools from last year got lost when they traded in their car or the scraper is still stored on a shelf in the barn cellar. I’ve done this a few times and I used to travel forty to fifty thousand miles a year. Now, I just leave everything in the car and stay home until the storm has quit. However, there should be no hesitation in buying new scraper and brush, as driving around blinded by snow is not a good policy. I worked in Oswego from 1976 to 1979 and drove up every morning on Oswego County Rd., #7. The students at SUNY Oswego often drove around with twelve to eighteen inches of snow on the roof their VW beetles. I think they tried to lose the snow somewhere along the way so they did not have to pick it up and find someplace to put it themselves. I recall there were rules about indiscriminate snow dumping in the parking lots and places around the college town. They were enforced and no-one wanted to be caught.
