Have you ever made a statement and immediately wished you could take it back?

All I said to my husband was, "It's cold in here. Would you mind turning a little heat up? I'm going upstairs to take a bath and it's so cold in this house you could hang meat."

It was that unmistakable look in Mel's eyes that led me to believe I was about to get one of his sermons.

"Woman do you realize how lucky you are? You jist twist a li'l ol' dial on a thermostat fer heat. What if you had to go cut th' wood, stoke th' ol' potbelly 'til she turned red, brang in the ol' number three warsh tub, draw some water from th' well an' heat it on th' stove top, an' then wait in line fer yore turn to take a bath in water that had already warshed four or five dirty younguns?

"Then ther' wuz th' water that had to be poured out an' th' tub warshed. When I was growin' up, we didn't go anywhere on Saturdey night 'cause we had to take a bath fer church on Sundeys. It wuz the onliest way Mama could keep us clean fer that long. Ever'body knew you went to God's house lookin' and smellin' yer best.

"Cold weather wuz hard on folks back then. You could throw a cat through the wall on nem ol' houses we lived in. Wall paper would flop like a flag when th' wind blew, an' a little snow in a big crack was th' norm. I remember that Grandma came to visit us one winter. She always got th' best room. That night, she put her false teeth in a glass of water on the night stand by the bed," Mel snorted an' said, "now stop me if you've heard this story before," but of course, before I could tell him I'd heard it no fewer than a dozen times, he took off again. "Next mornin' they wuz froze solid as a jug in a big chunk o' ice!" he hooted. "Grandma had to eat cream o' wheat 'til her teeth thawed out in a pan o' warm water."

"An' oh yes...we didn't have no 'lectric blankets neither. Mama'd pile us up with old quilts, an' I'd be so tard from the weight th' next mornin', I'd feel like sump'n fell on me. Thur was so many of us boys crowded into one bed, we kiney kept each other warm. We'd cover up an' only th' tips of our noses wuz out from under th' cover. When one of us'd turn over, we'd all turn, like when you set dominoes on end in a row an' knock one down, ever' one follers suit...

"Yep, when you'd see that blue line across th' horizon, you'd know it wuz a fixin' to git cold. We called 'em `blue northers.' Them axes'd fly. We' d fill th' wood boxes to th' brim pronto.

"It was always our habit to fill two 10-gallon cream cans with water fer emergency purposes, drain the stand pipe on the ol' wind mill, an' shut her down," Mel continued, adding: "You only fergit to do that onct, 'cause if the sucker rods froze in th' stand pipe' it would break th' sucker rods if you turned her on!

"Next, we'd put out some extry hay fer th' cows, turn on th' heat lamps fer th' new pigs, give th' chicken some extra feed an' lock the hen house door.

"Girl, you don't know what cold is!"

"Well it was pretty cold yesterday morning," I said. "On the way to work, I saw two hound dogs hooking jumper cables to a jackrabbit to get him started."