IN A LIGHTER VEIN
It’s a quirk of mine. But I think I’m probably the only person in the world who keeps an old comforter in her trunk, stuffed into a grocery tote from Basics.
Winter or summer, that’s where I put my bags with frozen or fresh items, and cover it all snugly with the plentiful lengths of puffy stuff.
I sometimes wonder, while I’m busy packing and tucking it all neatly together in the supermarket parking lot, why nobody stops to ask what on earth I’m doing! Hmm, maybe they think I’m too crazy to approach safely. A batty old lady who does totally weird things – better to avoid getting entangled with someone like that.
But I have to tell you how it came about in the first place.
In my twenties I met people in Germany, and heard about a dangerous snowstorm that had stranded hundreds of cars, with the people in them dying, on the autobahns all over the country. I met a woman who had only survived because she had a quilt in her car and some chocolate, which kept her from freezing and becoming weak from hunger. But it was years before the penny dropped and I started making sure there was at least a warm blanket aboard.
And a few years ago, when a bedspread comforter was worn enough, with the stuffing slipping heavily into the corners and edges, I couldn’t throw it away!! So it ended up in my trunk, and there it has stayed.
It’s a perfect cooler, or heat retainer. I can shop and then continue on other errands for a few hours knowing my frozen foods will still be frozen, my meats will still be cold even in the hottest summer weather.
And in the winter, I have no fear of lettuce, tomatoes or other soft foods wilting from partial freezing in the back seat. It’s that simple.
Plus no blizzard will freeze me to death! There it is, just a crazy old lady? Well, not if you ask her, that is – me!!
Eleanor Lawrie, Author 