One Winter Morning in Maine

Every home has a list of tasks that must be tended to every day. In Farmer Boy, author Laura Ingalls Wilder gives us a sneak peek into her husband’s boyhood home, sharing some snapshots of his family’s nightly indoor chores in New York State: Almanzo rubs tallow into his moccasins while big brother Royal greases his boots to keep them waterproof. Mother and the girls wash the supper dishes. Meanwhile in the cellar, Father cuts up carrots and potatoes to feed the cows the next day.

Now fast-forward 157 years from a night in New York to one winter morning in Maine.

Here at my home in Amity, we too divide up the tasks; I sometimes wonder how we even ended up with these particular jobs. One of mine is to turn off the porch lights. One switch is in the living room; the other is in the kitchen, several inches below the emergency switch for the furnace. I hardly glance at these switches, because I have done this so many times. And yet, every once in a while somebody reports that one—or both!—of the lights has been left on all day.

In 2023 on the morning of February 4, I performed my morning task of turning off the outside lights. And to make doubly sure, I think I might have even made a second swipe at the kitchen switch on my way to another room.

That morning was especially cold, since Canada had sent us some arctic air, a common export. Many Maine towns experienced windchills in the 40-below range in the northern part of the state; Frenchville plummeted to a record-breaking 61-below zero. (When your fuel tank sits outside, you cringe at those record-breakers, feeling more than a little vulnerable.)

Otherwise, that Saturday was fairly typical. We ate a leisurely breakfast; my husband and I sipped our usual cups of coffee; our children guzzled some orange juice. And then I heard my husband speak these dreaded words on that frigid winter morning: “I think we might have a problem.”

Immediately I knew what was wrong—the furnace. How had I expected the fuel line to function properly on a day like this? The heat had come on at some point that morning, but it had been a while. My husband had noticed and tried to make the furnace start, but to no avail.

Eventually he called the fuel company and we waited for the technician to arrive. We figured he would be busy on a cold morning like this one; it sure was nerve-racking before he climbed our porch steps. How much would this cost? Was it really just a frozen line, or was there more to it? Could this even be fixed? What would a new heating system cost, anyway? Questions pelted my mind like the blowing snow pelting our fuel tank.

Why shouldn’t the line freeze? After all, neighboring New Hampshire’s Mount Washington set a record that same day—108-below zero, the coldest windchill ever recorded in the United States. So Mainers were not alone when we experienced those frigid winds on February 4.

Of course, Mainers are no strangers to the cold. Maine ranks in the top ten states for coldness, not surprisingly. Our coldest day was on 16 January 2009: Big Black River saw 50-below zero—and that was the actual air temperature, not the windchill.

I am not sure if Amity broke any records that day; I was too busy fretting over our nonfunctioning furnace. Meanwhile, my husband had gone for groceries and the rest of us waited for help with the heat.

Finally the answer to my prayers trudged up the porch steps, no doubt weary from the many emergencies he had already responded to that morning. Greatly relieved, I ushered him in while my children watched from the living room. “Here is the furnace,” I proclaimed, pointing. “It stopped working sometime this morning.”

The furnace man got right to work. First he scanned the kitchen wall and said, “Let’s see,” as he … flipped a switch and waited. My mouth dropped open and my eyebrows shot up as the furnace began its familiar hum.

“Do you mean—the switch—was … OFF?!” Suddenly I felt both delighted with the prospect of heat and disgusted with myself for taking up his time. I apologized.

“That’s all right,” he assured me. “I like easy fixes.”

Then I turned toward the living room, my mind grasping for an explanation. “It must have been one of the children,” I reasoned. “Maybe the switch was accidentally turned off this morning by one of them.”

“Oh, I’d be willin’ to bet!” exclaimed the tech, glancing meaningfully into the living room. “Them evil kids and their designs!”

Somehow his comical corroboration made me feel better for having neglected to check that emergency switch. How could we have been oblivious to something so obvious? Now we owed the fuel company $95 since the furnace fellow had to come by to flip that switch for me. 

And to make matters worse, the more I considered my morning routine, the more I began to wonder. … Hadn’t my hand been positioned a bit too high that second time I breezed through the kitchen? Had I been the one to turn off the emergency switch when I meant to double-check that I had shut off the porch light?! Who knows?

Well, one thing I do know is that our daily tasks tend to differ from those in the nineteenth century when Almanzo Wilder was growing up. Before a frigid morning some of us might top off fuel tanks or buy batteries, bread, and milk at the grocery store. Others might simply struggle to pull the correct switch. But next time the furnace fails to warm us up on a winter morning in Maine, I plan to include “Check the Emergency Switch” on my to-do list.