November already! Where does the time go? It won't be long until Thanksgiving, then a skip and a jump to Christmas, and before we know it, 2005 will be history.

The weather has been so nice, it's truly hard to fathom that we could, at any time, get hit by a blizzard. Remember the Halloween blizzard of 1991? From that year forward, I have followed a simple axiom: always buy Halloween candy that you like, because you never know...

With the predicted spike in heating costs this winter, my wife and I have been looking at ways to make our home more energy efficient. Our home is relatively new (about 15 years old) and most of the easy fixes have been done, but I'm confident we can find a few air leaks to plug.

This is a far cry from my childhood, growing up in a two-story house built in the early 1900s. Every spring and fall, we would go through the ritual of changing out the screen windows for the storm windows. My parents have both passed away and my childhood home has been torn down, but the memories of "helping" my father, Arved, change out the windows remain vivid in my mind. Most childhood traumas, I am told, remain with us forever.

Changing the windows has passed into family legend and myth, retold at gatherings to regale and entertain.

My father was referred to as the "Chief" in our family. The Chief was a hard working man. He worked at the local Chevrolet and later Chevy/Buick dealership, as a mechanic, a job he held for over 50 years. He literally left the Army after World War II and went to work as a mechanic.

An average day for the Chief would begin at 7:30 a.m. and end at 5:30 p.m., with a one hour lunch break. He would spend half of his lunch hour napping after eating, and we were to be quiet or out of the house or risk death and/or dismemberment for rousing our napping father. At the end of the day, he would come home, take off his work boots and enjoy a cold beer before supper. Most evenings and weekends were spent relaxing in the back yard or napping watching television. The Chief valued his free time, and spent precious little of it on household maintenance. He disliked changing the windows as much as we disliked helping him.

I use the term "helping" loosely. The Chief was a perfectionist control freak and there was nothing that I or my brothers and sisters could do to assist him that would be satisfactory. Being kids, we picked up on the vibe right away and did as little as possible.

The basement of our house was something that would fit quite nicely in an Edgar Allan Poe story, dark, damp and full of cobwebs. The Chief had a unique code and filing system for the screens and storm windows stored in the basement. The secret code was known only to him, and even then, after six months, he would invariably forget the code and not be able to read his own handwriting.

He would usually wait until it was a blustery overcast day threatening snow, or a scoring summer day to change the windows. After mustering his "help"(it's amazing how busy your siblings become when there's actual WORK to be done), the Chief would gird himself for battle with a half broken screwdriver or butter knife (to pry the windows loose) and a hammer (to pound the basement humidity swollen windows into their frames). With military precision, we went off to do battle with the windows.

The ritual usually went like this: The Chief would climb the rickety wooden ladder, which was slowly rotting away into oblivion, having been stored outside, to take down the window and tell me where to find the replacement. I would make at least two trips down the spooky basement steps, searching in vain for the proper window before the Chief would give up on me and climb down the ladder to find the window himself.

After searching through the windows like Indiana Jones combing a tomb, he would find the correct window, and we would proceed up into the daylight. After climbing the ladder, I would hand him the window. I preferred summer to winter, because the screens weighed less. After repeating this ritual two or three times, the Chief began his "combination windows are the salvation of the human race" speech, which I was forced to listen to over and over. An entire Saturday or Sunday afternoon was shot on replacing the screens or storms.

One of the first things I looked for when buying a home in Le Mars was combination windows. Even though I no longer have to endure the ritual, I can't help but think of those afternoons spent fighting the storm windows.

As always, I welcome your comments. You can reach me by email at tstangl@lemarscomm.net, telephone 712-546-7031, x40 or toll free 1-800-728-0066 x40.

Thanks for reading, I'll keep in touch. Feel free to do the same.