How Cold Was It?
(Eastern Turkey
Triple AAA?)
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Cold, Burr and Cold…so was there a
thermometer anywhere to be found in
Eastern Turkey
to tell the tale? Not that I ever knew of but maybe the telling of this story
will assist that
scientific or meteorological mind
to somehow possibly determine just how cold it was?
It was three days due east from
Istanbul
in late December in one of those really bad years,
which brought
us travelers (me Jocko, claudou and Shardo) and our
English caravan into a place still not inked onto modern day maps.
Lonely
places stretched out on every side, while the frozen iced over road lay slick
and gleaming like a shiny white ribbon ahead. There were names
like
Is
mar, Kabana, Tuballa,
Kars
and hundreds of little snow covered villages which we would pass through not
ever seeing a soul. Yet the
villages were
alive somewhere under all that snow, for we could see thin drifts of smoke
rising up from the huge drifts piled back off the road.
Three or four more days going east,
we now were being jarred stupid, bumping and skidding over slick ribbons of
ice, broken into frozen puzzle sized chunks of solid ice and no end in site.
The below 0 days and really below 0 nights, with added win chill factor, would
freeze
the
surface of the roads solid a foot deep and huge trucks during the day would
then bounce along and crack the thick ice into pieces, making them into small
icebergs. The day time temperature would rise a few degrees and leave the multi
sized chunks separated by two and three inch gaps…thus the bone jarring and
rattling teeth ride was without end inside our small van.
The
days were mostly blizzard white outs, dim and darkish and very short and
towards late afternoon we always were on the look out for a small town or
village we might find shelter and fuel for the next days long drive east
towards our destination, India.
We
learned to watch for trucks parked along the way, this usually indicated
shelter, fuel and some type of civilization. I will say that we were puzzled
when we would come across a few long haul trucks clustered close together with
groups of kids gathered under them sitting around fires that burned directly
under the engines and transmissions. We had our ideas but couldn’t figure it
out, at least for a day or so, until we learned the hard way.
For
convenience sake I will call these little town lodges, which
were oddly plunked along one of the most desolate roads in the world, Turkish
Hotels. They could appear out of nowhere, but mainly they would be found near
to the front row street structures in some unnamed village. They could be of
any size and shape, but we usually looked for those that were still standing
erect. We were warned to try and stay in the wooden ones if possible, for the
stone buildings were prone to falling down in the least earth quakes, which
Eastern Turkey
was famous for.
I could write an entire book just on
this amazing Turkish Budget hotel
business along
this barren and desolate stretch of the world but that’ll have to wait. We were
on a tight budget and even if we weren’t, we still couldn’t find anything
better than an old converted camel barn or purchasing
a nights
stay among stacks of hay and sacks of grain, running thick with mice and other
creatures that I didn’t want to know about.
I
recall one memorable place, we finally named it “The Hiltonic Horriblerific” a
2000 year old structure actually leaning so far in all directions,
they
had logs holding it up on all four sides. We
were well received and duly honored with their best; an upstairs room, where
the walls were constructed out of large round river stones and many were
missing, allowing the snow, wind and ice to blow right into our room. The floor
planks were so far apart that you could see down into the room below and all
the smoke from below came up into your face. After I calculated the exchange
rates over I realized we got a real bargain
for
That special room with extra below heating and air conditioning, it cost us a total of $.25 cents…now that’s
a deal!
Back to this story; It was a dark
and stormy night in Eastern Turkey when we finally bumped our way around
several snow covered hills and entered into a better than usual village. The
hills had somewhat protected the cozy
looking village
from being buried completely and we could see a nice collection of buildings,
still standing. Jock pulled up in front of one large wooden structure of sorts,
it appeared to be an old warehouse boarded up for the winter. But we could see
smoke rising up out of a chimney and this was one of the signs we always looked
for. It meant that
their were
people there who wanted to keep warm, maybe have some chi going and who knows
what else?
We entered a rough framed door
indented into a high wooden wall and found ourselves in a small dark room,
suddenly confronted by several large
shabby fleeced
bundles which turned out to be humans trying to keep warm. Apparently
this was the hotel guards, I mean staff, who were
all wrapped
in the local winter fashions of
long sheep skin coats. They
were seated around a
crude table lighted by a dim lantern and were playing cards and drinking chi.
No doubt, these guys had to either be in some low budget Turkish movie or were
Kurdish road bandits, or at the least terrorists on the mend. After startled
glances from at least 7 sets of black glazed eyes which all at once seemed to
realized they had unexpected guests and before the astonished staff could jump
up and retrieve their weapons; for swords rifles and large sabers hung
everywhere on the walls,
a wiry man about a hundred years
old nervously beckoned us into his office.
This affair was a long dirt floor
room, hung with tattered old rugs and an
assorted collection
of splintered benches and rickety chairs scattered around a huge Turkish pot
belly stove. This contraption was made from iron drums welded together
exhausting clouds of smoke half into the room and half out the hole in the
roof, but still burning delightfully warm. Dim lit lanterns hung from long
wires and put out more smoke than light, adding to the near choking smoke
floating around the room.
With our newly acquired Turkish words, some jesters
and a few English and French words tossed in for further hopes of
communications we somehow managed to haggle one of Abdul’s best suites for the
night. We were then led down a crude planked hall of sorts and came to a room
where the door (an old Turkish Tobacco advertisement sign) was wired into a
post and there we entered. The room
was about 20 by 20 feet, hard packed dirt floors with dirty chopped straw and
was divided off from other dark rooms by what seemed to be plywood walls.
Curtains hung as doors and bare board platforms acted as beds. Abdul explained
in his best gestures and broken English,
that they
only supplied the walls and of course we were expected to provide our own
bedding, our own heat and our own food and whatever else we might have on hand
for convenience; like guns, knives, toilet paper and all other devices of self
protection.
The old Turk pointed off to a curtained area and made
a gesture indicating something to do with the human anatomy, which was later
interpreted as fulfilling bodily functions of all sorts. Later when we
investigated behind the curtain, we were surprised to find it pretty well
frozen solid and there was another plywood door wired shut, which led you out
directly into the mounds of snow and ice! Have you ever heard of that old
saying, “Don’t eat yellow snow,” well in
Turkey
it should say, “Don’t ever eat or drink chi made from yellow, brown or green
snow!”
We soon asked the hotel keeper
Abdul, if they had anything to eat, “O yes, very good res, soon to eat for you,
I go, tank yous,” and with this he was off.
We soon stretched out our bags on
the planked beds and began looking around for the wood that was
suppose
to come with the woodstove, but there was none. Then the hotel keeper Abdul,
returned carrying an
assorted stack
of odds and ends and put them down on one of the empty beds. He pointed to it
and made gestures of eating and rubbing his stomach and was soon gone again. I
went over and looked at what appeared to be large servings of rice on sheets of
newspapers folded up at the edges to contain the servings of rice. Abdul was
soon back with hand made can cups of hot chi. These were cleverly cut cans
folded down at the edge so as not to cut your lip and a tin handle soldered to
the side. They seemed to be old bean cans as far as I could tell but they were
full of hot chi and plenty sweet. This was about the safest thing for a
thousand miles; for safety, health and preservation, you learned never to drink
anything unless it was boiling or near to it.
Night fell black and
cold,
and I mean cold. We were provided with one dim lantern but we had to provide
our own wood for the stove. This is where the bitter cold began its deep
penetrating bite. The wind began howling and shaking the old building like a
leaf. You could literally see snow flying through every crack in the wall and
then the huge flakes began to freeze up and soon sealed off the entire room
tightly, locking both the smoke and cold into the room. We sat around shaking
and asking for more
chi
but Abdul had shut down the cockroach kitchen for another 30 years, hopefully!
It was obvious that we needed a fire
to keep from freezing and boil our own water for chi but Abdul told us that all
the wood sellers were gone for the night. He seemed to say, “Whtcha crazy,
its
too cold to be out making money!”
Then claudou
pointed to the unused bed and asked Abdul how much?
At first
Abdul
didn’t
understand but after enacting the burning up of the bed in the woodstove Abdul
came bright with “Yes, yes, very good deal I make you!”
And so we now began to roam around
the icy hotel and began negotiating and buying up the
wood benches,
tables, chairs and odd shaped furniture throughout the hotel. Yes, you got it
right,
we bought up the entire stock of the hotels furniture and carried it back to
our room. If I remember correctly, we spent about ten American dollars for the
entire delivery and Abdul was thrilled with what he thought to be our
gullibility and his good fortune!
With no thought of the value to this
furniture ,
which might have been worth thousands as Turkish antique masterpieces, we broke
and split them into burnable sizes and soon our pot belly stove was roaring hot
and our evening chi was boiling. In fact it was working so good that the hotel
owner Abdul and his very suspicious looking staff came in and spent the greater
part of the night with us. This must have been a real treat for them, sitting
around a fire, actually burning rare antique furniture from Solomon’s era, hey
that was living!
You say, “Hey, that’s not fair!” But I say, “To heck with fair,” the
freeze was on, and it was near impossible to even take off ones jacket or
gloves, and that was inside your sleeping bag. As long as Abdul was happy with
this sale, hey, we were too! The only thing I was concerned about was that the
owner of the hotel might show up in the morning and wonder where the heck all
his fine furniture had gone to but we should be long gone by then…for sure!
Now don’t think this place was
anywhere near the cost of the Hilton for the night, nor did we pay any great
costs for a bench or a single chair.
In fact the hotel room, if you can
call it a hotel at all, and one might have difficulty even calling this
encompassed plywood area a room, cost us about $1.25 (American) and that was
for all of us.
The owner was more than delighted to
sell us every stick of furniture for what he thought to be some exorbitant
price of about $.50 cents for a small bench, $1.00 for a larger bench, while
the chairs went for about a dollar and a half each. We bought every piece of
wood in the
place,
the only thing we didn’t burn was the walls. I would guess it took at least one
good sized chair to put off enough heat for an hour and made it possible to at
least remove the heavy outer jackets and you had to stay low to the floor in
order to escape the layer of smoke floating thick, but at least it was warm
smoke. We must have been honored guests, for
the Hotels
floorshow was really a most memorable evening of Turkish-Kurdish-Iraqi entertainment.
Abduls friends and
staff like
the stars they were, managed to take over our room. After bravely examining our
belongings with twitchy fingers they somehow decided to show us their knife and
saber throwing skills. They did
this by
hurling long curved knives across the room and sticking them into a post…every
time! Each bandit, I mean hotel staff member would stand like a statue and
suddenly let out a little blood curdling shriek, then suddenly pull from
somewhere out of his robe garment this long shiny blade and all in a split
second, it would be flashing with a hiss and thud deep into the far post…and
you better believe that we with mixed emotions would all clap!
About two hours into this smoke den
experience, I became rather overwhelmed when my lungs began to collapse. The
woodstove was well on its way of producing global warming from smoke all on its
own, plus having all our uninvited guests and our two French traveling
companions with us all smoking camel dung cigarettes too. I
realized that this slow curing process was not only dangerous to my entire
family tree for three generations but I knew none of us would make it through
the night under these conditions. O wow, just what I needed,
to be found smoked to death and buried with that eastern flavor of camel dung
cigarettes rising from my grave…forever!
And so due to safety and health reasons, I decided to
sleep in the van.
The icy wind was now howling around the van, but I
rolled out my cold tested mountain bag and crawled in. I was still wearing my
boots with three pairs of socks, long johns, thick
levis
, two under shirts, a high necked woolen shirt, a thick sweater, a
heavy jacket, gloves and a pull over wool cap…and I was still cold. If for any
reason I stuck my head out of the safety of the bag, my mustache and beard
would freeze but in time I managed to fall asleep. A few hours into this
freezer test, that earlier chi began playing soccer with my bladder and if I
wanted any more sleep this mid night pee had to be accomplished. I got up,
everything crackled under foot, and the van door refused to open…I was trapped.
I took my flash light and shined it through the windows, nothing but a curtain
of snow packed tight against the doors but with great effort finally pushed the
door open to now find myself in a tunnel that the door made. The wind still
blew out there but the snow drifts now kept the wind from hitting the van
directly. I kicked a notch in the wall and emptied my bladder and crawled back
into the van where I now found even my sleeping bag frozen.
But once again managed to get settled for the
remainder of the night.
Several hours later, it was a faint
muffled voice that caught my ear and I thought I heard Jocks voice calling me.
I got out of the bag, and it was still dark but soon a bluish light began to
appear through the side window and realized it was Jock digging his way to the
van.
After some time he opened the door and it was as if I
saw a frozen ice man there, totally covered in snow and ice.
”Goodd mor-morning there, he-hey its ti-ti-time to
roll, you’ve got to go-go-o get some help,” Jocks words came through his
chattering teeth.
I got scared, thinking about our
hotel guests and their flashing sabers, “Help, what kind of help you talking
about Jock, is everything ok,” I
Inquired from Jock.
“De van,
its
frozen up solid to ground really bad stuff here.
so
the guys are making something to eat and want you to go find a team of horses
to pull us out.”
I laughed, “A team of horses, what the heck you guys been
smoking?”
“No, no Me gel, the Turk Abdul says this is what to do to get
van going again,” Jock muttered his words out as he told me and departed back
into the barn, garage warehouse hotel.
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Ok, I got ready, thought to brush my
teeth first, but the tooth paste was frozen solid, then decided I’d at least
have an orange to start with (we had bought some oranges back a
thousand miles) but o my, they were frozen solid and I knew it was cold.
I climbed out of the van, and
punched my way through the wall of snow and entered into what was one of the
brightest blue days I had ever seen. It was very beautiful but
boy,
was it ever cold, how cold, well, let me tell you! Within moments, I only had
half a mustache left and I can’t tell you here about my other body parts!
I looked around and headed down the
road towards the nearest buildings and went about two feet and slipped on the
hard packed ice. The snow had been
packed into ice and it was dangerous to walk on, that’s why anyone that was out
was being pulled around in horse drawn slays. After this I slid my way down
into the village and found the chi shop, packed with men sitting around a huge
wooden stove all jabbering about something and I imagined it concerned all the
smoke from the hotel last night. It got quiet when I walked in but I soon
ordered my chi and began asking about hiring a team of horses. I was told to go
to the blacksmith shop around the corner and old Abraheem would take care of
me.
Now this is what I call the Eastern
Turkey Triple AAA Service and if you ever find yourself in this situation, you
better have an Eastern Turkey Triple
A
card available….lots of money!
After about 20 minutes of haggling
old
Abraheem and
I were sitting on what seemed to be a short buckboard pulled by two really
straggly camels. I pointed up the road to where our van was frozen to the
ground but he took a route through town and came around from the other side.
This was so he didn’t have to turn his camels around, preventing
them from a possible slippery fall.
By the time we got to the van
claudou and Shardo had cleared off the mounds of snow and Jock was trying to
start the engine. Old
Abraheem gestured
to Jock to leave off the starting of the van, saying, “NO, no this no good, bad
stuck ole strong like rock.” This meant that the oil in the engine and
trans
was frozen solid and no use wearing out battery until engine and breaks were
all free.
The wagon was then backed up to the
front side of the van and Abraheem tied an old thick rope to the bumper and got
back on his wagon. He slowly moved his camels forward until the rope was tight.
Then with Jock at the wheel Abraheem cracked his whip and the
camels actually
leaped forward. The rope snapped taunt and we heard a crack from under the van.
Again, Abraheem cracked his whip and
the beasts
leaped forward and the van was jerked sideways now loosened from the frozen
dirt. Abraheem continued snapping his whip and the team dug their hooves into
the ice and with shoulders down they began pulling or should I say sliding the
van along the ice.
I jumped in next to Jock and we
could feel that the wheels were frozen solid, not one was turning but the van
was just
being slid
over the slick surface of the iced road. Down the road we slid, the wheels
remained frozen in place and the engine would not turn over. Around the block
we went, passing the chi shop where men were now watching this giant sled being
pulled along by two Triple AAA camels. Up and down we went, turning from one
road to another and now we had a good number of kids running after us and
yelling their delights…”Kill
Them!”
After about ten minutes of this
sliding, we finally felt one wheel break free from its ice grip and slowly
begin thudding. Then another and finally after about twenty minutes of this
sliding and thudding all four wheels were turning. Even with this minor success
Abraheem still wouldn’t stop his
horses and
I thought he was just another typical taxi driver, just running up the bill.
But apparently this Eastern Turkey Triple AAA service technician knew what he
was doing. Jock pushed in the clutch and put the van into gear and as we were
being towed along the main street of this village, he would slowly let out the
clutch in order to break the engine loose and try to circulate the oil. The
engine would grunt and jerk and slowly, but ever so slowly it began to turn. It
was like an egg beater trying to beat its way through frozen tar but finally by
friction and force the engine was turning over.
We now had the wheels freely
rolling, and the engine was cranking around and slowly Jock turned the ignition
key on. Nothing, more pulling, still nothing, some gas, a sputter, more gas, a
pop then a rest and then it kicked over on its own and sputtered with
hesitation into life. It died but started again and finally Jock had the motor
purring but Abraheem still was pulling us around and brought us back to our
hotel.
It took another 20 minutes to rid
the windows of about one inch of solid ice and get all the doors open and
everything unstuck.
Now I understood why I had seen those trucks with fires
burning under them at night while still running and parked.
So this was how cold it was,
temperature wise, I can’t say, but cold enough to have to hire the Eastern
Turkey Triple AAA Team to come out and
break our
vehicle out of the frozen ice and to then tow it for 45 minutes, just to get it
rolling on its own, then another 20 minutes of added horse power to get it
started!
We said our goodbyes to Abdul, the savory bandits and
Abraheem and finally got on our way and we didn’t shut off the engine for 2000
miles, until the temperature rose to at least FREEZING…and now you know!
Update: We later learned that the United Nations
Environmental Department
invaded Abdul’s
Hotel-Warehouse-Museum-Storage shed. They somehow discovered a hideous plot to
increase Global Warming by expanding the Ozone hole with the
Eastern Turkey
smoke machine hidden in this hotel. Why, no one knows as of yet.
But good old Abdul came out
smelling, well pretty good, for the UN thought it good to place Abdul as their
head researcher and advisor in this field of Smoke Pollution and now he lives
in
New
York
in a research lab at the top of a massive skyscraper with his barrel burning
smoke machine. Abdul’s assignment is to completely inundate the city atmosphere
with smoke so thick that all foreigners, spies and terrorists cannot see the
United Nations building. And everyone is free to walk the streets without
choking as long as they wear special smoke masks that the UN is now selling for
$500 each! We will keep you posted on Abdul’s progress.
A note on Abraheem: The Triple AAA found out about
Abraheem’s extraordinary
services and
thought it to be a wonderful idea. Thus
they have
hired Abraheem to expand his operation throughout the
Middle East. As of 6 months ago, Abraheem has opened 20
new AAA hoarse and camel pulling services offering expanded opportunity to all
major cities, including
New
York
!
By Michael M.
Michaelson ©
Contact
Author At: michael@ticktalk.net
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