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 pushbuttons that  it took to start the heat, we waited  outside, shivering, until he eventually 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 that she was going 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, which is where my father had it set now: 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 since it ha no blower,  the heat never made it into the bedrooms anyway, not that it mattered  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.