So cold that…

It’s just past 2 in the afternoon and still zero at our studios in Canton. Dale Hobson made me laugh with today’s Listening Post, describing the Wile E. Coyote variation on starting a car at these temperatures. That’s when you’ve sprayed dry gas into the carburetor or wherever, and the thing backfires…explosively.
I learned about dry gas first hand in 1975, I think, when a caravan drove to Montreal for Chinese food and the Bob Dylan/The Band concert. It was 20-30 below that night on the way back. We had the newest car, a 1974 Super Rabbit, which rolled to a dead stop on the roadside at St. Zotique. The gas line had frozen, at full speed. The boys hiked across the empty, snowy fields toward the only light in sight…which happened to be a gas station with a French-speaking mechanic asleep inside. A miracle. Dry gas works even with a language barrier, even when all you know is to just pour it into the gas fill and wait to see if things thaw out.