KEEPING WARM 
angle and corner, and thundering down the 
chimney in a way that used to threaten to 
topple all down before it. 
In the works of Emerson and Longfel- 
low such storms are depicted in vivid 
imagery intended to set the scene for an 
intimate moment forced on people by 
the power of nature. Despite the dra- 
matic images of depth of snow and 
intense cold conveyed by poets, novel- 
ists, and diarists, careful study of actual 
winter conditions by historians and me- 
teorologists indicates that these ac- 
counts describe extremes. Just as the 
great eastern blizzard of 1978 will live in 
the memory of all who experienced it, 
unusually cold or snowy seasons and 
severe storms made a vivid impression 
on people’s minds, providing the founda- 
tion for these dramatic descriptions. 
It is true that there were drifts of 
snow as high as fourteen feet in late 
winter of 1717, when Cotton Mather 
described “as mighty a snow, as perhaps 
has been known in the memory of man.” 
The year 1816 is frequently referred to 
as the “year without a summer” for 
there were frosts every few weeks from 
May to September. Even Dr. Bentley’s 
January 1810 morning was widely 
known as “cold Friday”; for generations 
New Englanders recounted the effects 
of the spectacular overnight tempera- 
ture drop of more than fifty degrees and 
its accompanying severe wind chill. We 
should remember, though, that diarists 
and tellers of tales alike have a tendency 
to record the unusual rather than the 
commonplace, so it is not surprising that 
one finds an occasional notation of water 
in a washbasin or ink in an inkstand 
freezing in March or October. Such 
things certainly happened often during 
the coldest months, but because they 
were expected at that time of year, they 
did not provoke comment and were 
dealt with on a day-to-day basis. 
By the end of the eighteenth century, 
many people realized that large, open 
fireplaces were not efficient sources of 
heat. Fireplaces in seventeenth-century 
New England houses were aptly de- 
scribed as cavernous. We can easily 
believe the descriptions of people mov- 
ing a small group of chairs right into one 
corner of the hearth, since most of the 
heat of any fire would have gone di- 
rectly upward through the wide, damp- 
erless flues. Even a huge fire built with 
“a very forest of logs” was not enough to 
warm much of a room, although some 
warmth was gained near the fire itself. 
Eventually, the fireplace would begin to 
If you d like to know some other unusual things about Lynchburg, drop us a line 
1 
^ m TM 
WHEN GOOD FRIENDS GET 
TOGETHER in downtown Lynchburg, 
you’ll never see a glass of Jack Daniel’s. 
The county where we make our whiskey is 
dry. (It voted that way in 1909.) So when 
folks have a friendly chat, it’s usually over 
ice cream or soda. OI course, rm 
we hope the law isn’t 
as binding in your home- 
town. And that, at your 
next friendly get-together, 
a glass of Jack Daniel’s 
will be somewhere in 
the picture. 
Tennessee Whiskey • 90 Proof • Distilled and Bottled by Jack Daniel Distillery 
Lem Motlow. Prop.. Inc., Route 1. Lynchburg (Pop. 361), Tennessee 37352 
Placed m the National Register of Historic Places by the United States Government 
99 
