Why Put Style Above Comfort?

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial page staff
Published by the StarTribune
December 30, 1962


   I SEE THESE high school lads walking along the street on freezing mornings with warm and woolly stocking caps on the back of their heads, serving them no better than beanies.
   Half the time my own son even rams his into his pocket after leaving the house. I’ve threatened to run outside and pull it down over his ears but he tells me to forget it and quit being old-fashioned. He wonders if I ever was young.
   I don’t ever remember being young enough to enjoy cold ears, cold feet or chattering teeth and never hesitate to forget about style when weather conditions warrant.
   Perhaps it’s because I was so often cold in childhood that I now love so much to be warm. In those benighted days central heat had not yet blessed the town of my boyhood, nobody could even spell insulation, and storm sash had never been heard of. The main heating plant was the kitchen range, augmented by stoves in dining room and parlor. Drafts were accepted as a normal curse and the expression “cold as a barn” was not just a whimsical comparison. I never compared notes with the cow but am sure she kept as warm as I did.

   THUS I NOW APPRECIATE  every comfort-giving facility, and those, including my own flesh and blood, who wish to scoff at my ear-flaps and overshoes are free to do so. My wife, who eschews extra foot gear unless the snow is ankle deep, laughs at me for wearing rubbers in cold weather when the ground is bare. She says I shouldn’t act so old and infirm. Let her laugh. I prefer warm feet to cold ones and would rather be comfortable than young.
   I rate the electric blanket as the greatest thing since the wheel and never turn mine on without gratitude as I hark back to those frosty bedroom yesterdays when everyone huddled under tons of blankets and turning over in bed or sending an exploratory foot downward for the soapstone took real character.
   Ten minutes before hitting the sack I turn the dial up close to the fire mark to insure toasty repose. On getting into bed I either modify the temperature or forget to. I thus sometimes awaken with a sense of being overdone, and it takes a while to simmer down and recapture sleep. However, this is no fault of the blanket and anyway I’d rather be hot than cold.

  I CAN’T UNDERSTAND why so many garments that once blunted the teeth of winter have gone into limbo or nearly so. The raccoon coat, fancied particularly by college boys in the 1920’s, was an admirable thing and deserved enduring popularity. It has gone, however, and the storm coat is almost as dead. To say that such apparel is now anachronistic because of more warm cars and fewer pedestrians is to talk nonsense.
   Like it or not, in fair weather and foul we sometimes have to walk, and winter should not deprive us of this health-giving exercise. Indeed, we should make it a point to take brisk winter hikes regularly.
   But there’s no pleasure or benefit in such a walk if you’re shaking like an aspen, no exhilaration unless you’re warmly dressed.
   Since no trip to Florida is in my immediate future, my regret this Christmas was that my gifts didn’t include a couple of suits of insulated underwear to see me through until spring. This quilted lingerie, I understand, is quite popular with young folks, probably the lads who wear stocking caps perched atop their heads.

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