The freezing month of February 1956

I was a kid living with my parents at the time, and the month of February of 1956 was the longest cold spell in our mountain village history; it lasted from February 7 to February 29, with 23 consecutive days of extremely cold temperatures.

Recently, I was reminiscing these days with my brother, with whom I was sharing the same bedroom. He remembered that the inside exterior wall was covered with ice. That's right, sheer ice! Hard to imagine, ice on the complete wall, not just the windows; now, I remember it quite clearly!

Our parents cinder-block house had no insulation whatsoever and my brother who always had a weak pulmonary system was just in the worst possible environment that would exacerbate his current prolonged and very severe case of emphysema.

Of course, our parents had no idea at the time and for them it was simply a way to fatalistically accept the idea of the survival of the fittest!