A chill is in the Jacksonville air these days. No problem. Growing up in Central Illinois, I learned early how to deal with the cold. When it snowed my mother would bundle her brood in coats and mittens, galoshes, wool scarves and hats, then allow us to play outside. Afterward, frozen stiff, we would stand in the utility room while she removed our icy outer wear and then hustled us into the kitchen for cookies and hot chocolate. When we had been sledding all afternoon, we thawed out with a hot bath first, then enjoyed the cookies and cocoa.
Touvelle Proprietors, Gary and Tim Balfour take shelter at Britt
Those lessons came in handy during the thirty years I spent in San Francisco, except that the bundling up occurred in the summer. There’s nothing more frigid than gale force winds and fog rolling in at Drake’s Beach on an August afternoon. I recall one evening in July at an Oakland A’s game when I donned more layers than I wore as a child making snow angels in the backyard.
Whenever out of town guests planned Bay Area summer visits, I would repeatedly remind them to bring warm clothes – to no avail. After all, when you are sweltering in triple-digit Texas temperatures, how can it be cold in California? The fleece jackets that I kept handy for friends and family inevitably became their primary vacation accessory.
The big chill was far from my mind when I dressed for the Mary Chapin Carpenter concert this past June at the Britt. Since temperatures had been in the mid-90s a few days earlier, I chose lightweight layers. So did my friends. We were frozen to the bone by the end of what turned out to be an unexpectedly nippy al fresco evening.
Soon afterward the day of the Alison Krauss concert dawned cold and rainy. Having learned from our previous experience, we developed elaborate contingency plans for Britt that evening. Tarps, heavy gauge plastic sheets, wool, goose down and fleece blankets, umbrellas, sweaters, jackets and scarves filled our bags and backpacks. I added two thermoses of steamy hot chocolate to ward off any hint of a chill. When everything was loaded into the back of the SUV, it looked like four of us were heading out for a week of wilderness camping in January.
I had no idea how prepared we were until my perennially equipped friend opened her Igloo bag. Tucked inside were plastic ponchos in multiple designer colors, hand warmers, a tiny foil-wrapped emergency blanket, Cadbury chocolate, a monocular and binoculars, bottled water, Ziploc bags, a camera, a Gortex rain coat with hood and gloves, lip balm and lip gloss, and miniature bottles of Jack Daniels, Baileys and Schnapps. If we had to endure torrential rains and frigid winds to hear Grammy award-winning bluegrass music, we would survive.
As it turned out, the rain receded before the concert began and resumed just as we were loading the car afterwards. It didn’t even get all that cold. Then again, perhaps it did. We never would have noticed.
Gates McKibbin moved to Jacksonville after working and living in the Bay Area for three decades as a consultant to major corporations. This column contains her musings about this remarkable community and her new life far away from the fast lane.