Dragging Main in the Dead of Winter

By Mark Morgan

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Back when dragging Main was the closest thing we had to a Friday-night luxury cruise, we thought nothing in this world could slow us down. But winter in Waldron had a way of humbling even the toughest kid with a fresh tank of gas and a loud exhaust.

Summer dragging?

That was easy.Windows down, elbows out, yelling across traffic at friends we’d already seen twice that day. Main Street was our kingdom.

But winter?

Winter turned Main Street into an icebox with streetlights.

The minute you pulled out, the windshield fogged up faster than a preacher catching his kid smoking behind the fellowship hall. You could wipe it clean, sure—but it’d fog back up so quick it felt personal.

And the heater?

Lord help us.Every old car back then came with a heater that blew air colder than outside, like it was taking revenge for something.

Stopping at Piggly Wiggly was its own survival challenge. You could sit in that parking lot maybe three minutes before frostbite started filling out your mail. And yelling out the window? Forget it. In summer it was fun. In winter it felt like your teeth were trying to pack up and leave town.

But that didn’t stop us.We were small-town kids—too stubborn to quit and too bored to stay home.

When Main Street got too cold, we migrated like ducks with driver’s licenses.

Some nights we made our way to the high school basketball games, stomping snow off our boots and acting like we were ESPN reporters. Didn’t matter if the Bulldogs were up, down, sideways, or confused—win, lose, or draw, they were the best team in America as far as we were concerned.

That’s small-town pride, and we had plenty of it.

On colder nights, we bundled up for late-season football games, where the cheerleaders looked like they were cheering from inside personal sleeping bags. If you could clap without your gloves falling off, you were doing better than most.

And when the cold finally chased us off Main Street altogether, we ended up at Pizza Barn, ordering enough hot cheese to thaw our faces back into working condition. Half of us were there for the pizza. The other half were just trying to feel our toes again.

But nothing—NOTHING—beat our favorite winter sport:

The Freeze-Out Challenge 

And when winter got so mean it made the weather radio apologize, that’s when we invented our favorite cold-weather competition:

Freeze-Out.

Freeze-Out wasn’t a game — it was a test of character, poor judgment, and circulation.

The rules were simple and cruel:Every window in the car went down.Yes, even that back one that screamed when you rolled it.And the first soul to roll theirs back up was branded the loser, forever known as “soft.”

We’d roll down Main Street with the wind blasting through the car like it was mad at us personally. The cold hit so hard it felt like it had elbows. Breath floated around the cab, and everybody’s teeth started clicking like a room full of typewriters.

Within seconds, ears went numb, noses turned red, and somebody’s hair froze in a position they’d keep until spring. One boy’s face locked up so stiff he looked like he was smiling for a school picture he didn’t sign up for.

There was always one fella who claimed he “wasn’t cold.” Sat there grinning like a possum in a freezer, acting tough while his ears slowly turned the color of a ripe tomato left on the porch too long.

The rest of us sat there shivering so hard the car looked like it had engine trouble. Hands shook. Knees knocked. One boy swore the cold “reached down and pinched him on the inside.”

And then it happened.

Someone’s willpower cracked before their window did.A hand crept toward the crank like it had a mind of its own.Then—click.

Game over.

The loser got laughed at, pointed at, and reminded of it for the next three years at Pizza Barn, basketball games, and family reunions. The winner didn’t get much—just frostbite, bragging rights, and a cough that sounded like a dying lawn mower—but that was plenty.

And if you’ve never played Freeze-Out in a car where the heater blew air colder than the outside and the wind cut sharper than a rumor in a beauty shop…well, friend, you missed a fine piece of poor decision-making.

Moral of the Story:

A small town in winter will teach you things no school ever could. It’ll show you that a broken heater reveals more truth than a lie detector, that good friends will dare you into misery and stand beside you while you suffer, and that pride is the warmest thing you own when everything else quits working. It also teaches this important lesson: if you roll your window up first, you might save your fingers — but you’ll lose your reputation, and that takes longer to thaw.