Survival: A Primer

"Hssst!" hissed the minked Westchester matron to a furbelowed companion at New York's Grand Central Terminal. "Come with me. I know a place that has earmuffs!"

Good luck! Bonne chance! Happy hunting!

Among other items in nationwide short supply and fierce demand in this killing winter are woolen underwear, blankets (wool and electric), flannel shirts, wool socks, parkas, mittens, gloves, mufflers, ski pants, goggles, hand warmers, car batteries, weather stripping, calking guns, firewood, woodburning stoves, electric heaters, and radios with the weather band that tells you how frightful today is going to be.

Yet another item in short supply is old-fashioned common sense. Herewith TIME'S all-purpose, endless-winter survival guide, as composed by Senior Writer Michael Demarest:

CODDLE YOURSELF. Frostbite, associated in the popular mind with polar explorers and Everest ascenders, is a real and insidious danger whenever it is freezing outside. Just ten minutes of exposure can injure ears, cheeks, tips of noses and ungloved fingers. Smoking increases the risk, since nicotine constricts blood vessels, hastening the cooling process. Nor should one drink alcohol before venturing outside. Booze opens up the blood vessels and accelerates heat loss from the body.

The first symptom of frostbite is a tingling sensation in the extremities. The skin turns slightly red at first and then becomes pale grayish-yellow and numb. Pain subsides and sometimes blisters begin to appear. At the first signs, the victim should be brought inside and the affected parts warmed with tepid, not hot water. Snow should never be massaged on a frostbitten area. Second-and third-degree frostbites are treated like burns; sometimes victims are hospitalized. Thus it is only commonsensical to suit up for winter as if it were a mortal foe--which it can be (see box following page).

CODDLE YOUR CAR. Cars get the blahs, just as people do in the cruelest months. The battery is the auto's tenderest part: in freezing temperatures, it loses up to 50% of its power. To keep it happy, the car should be garaged at night, with a blanket over the hood or a warming watch light hung inside. To keep the battery charged, the driver should stay in second gear for as long as possible at speeds under 50 m.p.h.; when the car is in high gear, the generator does not produce enough energy to beef up the down-drawn cells. Never try to start the car when any accessories --heater, radio, windshield wipers--are turned on. Keep an aerosol can of ether in the car. You may not have to use it to fight off bears or buffaloes, but it can be a useful way to whiff alive a cold, dank motor.

EAT HEARTY. The metabolism works overtime when the body is exposed to cold. As the human's heat pump, the body has to be fueled--with food. In Maine logging camps, a typical meal consists of vegetable soup, baked beans, bread and jam, macaroni and cheese, ground-beef casserole, pancakes, spaghetti and meatballs, beef stew, fresh baking-powder biscuits, in no particular order. Somewhat more delicately, Julia Child girds for winter with bean soup, enriched with leftover beef or lamb stew or whatever, and home-baked bread. And long johns.

Old Asian hands swear by kimchi, a fiery, vile-smelling Korean dish concocted of Chinese cabbage, garlic, ground red pepper, scallions, onions, ginger and (it is said) a dash of dynamite. To bring the mishmash to the properly explosive level, one should seal it in a crock and bury it beneath the ground for several days of fermenting --the longer the better. After a few gulps of kimchi, the round-eyed tyro breaks into a heavy sweat and for hours thereafter exhales such a powerful stench that he is guaranteed front place in queues for buses or movies--in fact, the queues will probably dissolve entirely as soon as he appears.

More practical for winter shut-ins is one of the vitamin-rich stuffed-cabbage dishes lovingly described in George Lang's The Cuisine of Hungary. "Housewives," he writes, "usually began preparing it on Saturday morning; toward evening, when it was ready, they wrapped it [the covered casserole] neatly in a cloth and tucked it in at the foot of someone's bed. It served as a remarkable foot-warmer throughout the winter months ... On Sunday it was eaten, and the leftover was tied up in the same manner and again laid in bed."

SLEEP WARM. Bed--with or without a cabbage casserole--is the ultimate refuge and solace. Two in bed are always warming company, and three or four or more, bundling in the name of survival, can generate more heat than Consolidated Edison. T.H. White, the chronicler of Camelot (The Once and Future King), took to bed all winter in his Channel Island cottage. He spread layers of newspaper over the mattress, covered them with a blanket, put on sheets, added a blanket or two, topped it off with a goose-down quilt and, spurning electric blankets, installed his red setter in the cabbage-casserole position.

BE OF GOOD CHEER. For Americans unused to it, a long siege of cold can be terribly depressing--particularly for those who live alone in apartments or country homes. Cabin fever sets in. The suicide rate soars. Psychiatrists are too busy to answer phones. Getting to and from school and supermarket is an ordeal. Getting to and from work is sometimes an impossibility, especially for suburbanites tied to commuter trains that seem to die in their tracks when the first snowflake falls. The house is chilly and the family short-tempered. Winter stress can be aggravated by the thought of pyramiding fuel bills and the cost of coffee and the unavailability of vegetables. It is time to turn up the thermostat of the soul.

One sure cure for cabin fever is to invite friends, near neighbors, unknown potential friends--or whole families --for an evening or a night or a weekend. For example, in Wheaton, Ill., 22 neighbors of Sandy and Alan Bergerson turned down their furnaces and converged for an overnight stay in the Bergerson home, bringing with them soda, beer and potato chips and their own breakfast. The neighbors disengaged reluctantly on Sunday afternoon, hoping that it would stay cold so they could repeat the marathon in another house, another time.

In any case, whatever the company, the warmth will emanate from the assembled souls, assisted by, say, mulled wine, Mozart and mozzarella. Or glogg, goulash and Gershwin. Or how about risotto, Ronstadt and Romanee-Conti?

It takes a crisis to jolt Americans out of their soft, sure ways, their near-total reliance on delivered technology: gas, electricity, oil, cars, trains, buses. To rediscover self-reliance and individual responsibility, and the kind of joy that can be pressed most sweetly from hard times. To re-establish old wisdom and simple certitudes: hot chestnuts in the hand, calories in the tum. Above all, it is a time to take private inventory of friends and bosses, associates, acquaintances and lovers, past, present and putative.

As W.H. Auden wrote:

Winds make weather; weather

Is what nasty people are

Nasty about and the nice

Show a common joy in observing . . .

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