This has been an abnormally cold winter in South Florida, and 50 years from now old timers will be telling their grandkids about the time it was so cold the iguanas were falling out of the trees. I am fortunate, however, that my house has clean and efficient electric heat. It was not always that way. It is easy to forget just how cold a home in Fort Lauderdale could get 30 years ago. Our house had jalousie windows in every room, and no central heating system, and we shivered and froze through many a cold snap until on January 19, 1977 the unthinkable happened: It was so cold that it snowed in Fort Lauderdale. The nuns told us it was a sign that it was the end of the world, but it was the first time that my brother and I, like many South Florida kids, had ever seen snow and we spent the morning trying to catch snowflakes on our tongues. Schools closed, businesses emptied and my father announced gravely that he was going to light the oil heater. For Dad to even contemplate lighting the oil heater, it had to be the end of the world.
I do not believe there is a modern equivalent to the oil heater. It took up an entire wall of the living room and looked like a small crematorium. It was fueled by what looked and smelled like crude oil, and when lighted it made the house smell like a refinery; it left a thick residue of greasy black soot on every surface. To this day I have no idea how Dad lighted the heater; since my mother was convinced he was going to blow up the house, she took all of us kids outside to wait for the explosion in the driveway. Because he never quite mastered the complex system of pilot lights and electric ignitions it took to start the heat, we waited outside, shivering, until he got frustrated and called Uncle Carl. Uncle Carl was a mechanical wizard when he was sober, but since he was only rarely sober the fate of our entire family now rested in the hands of our inept father and his drunken brother. We remained in the driveway and watched our fingers turn blue.
We knew the burner ignited when we heard what sounded like a bomb detonating inside the house; simultaneously we saw Dad and Uncle Carl knocked off their feet by the force of the ignition. Ashen, Dad announced it was safe to come back into the house. Carl announced that he needed a drink. My mother announced her plans to turn on the heater in the Chevy and sleep in the car with the children.
The oil burner had no thermostat, and it only had two settings: “off” and “turbo;” so when we were finally coaxed back into the house it sounded like a Boeing 707 was taking off in the living room. The burner put off enough heat to blister your skin, but only if you stood next to it, and the heat never made it into the bedrooms anyway because Mom kept the bedroom doors closed, with the conviction that when the burner exploded it would keep the fireball from scorching the children. Dad manfully slept in the living room, presumably so that if there was an explosion he would be the first to die, but probably because it was the only warm room in the house.
I never slept that night anyway; the combination of the cold, the snow and the possibility of instant annihilation had the effect of a double espresso on me. I shivered under the covers, listening to the roar of the oil heater, waiting for the explosion and wondering if the end really WAS near.