What much of the country is going through right now--that polar vortex thing--is something I've lived through once before. Christmas week of 1983, and I'm reminded of that every December as the weathermen go through the rundown of records highs and lows in times past. On 23 Dec of that year, I was working in Evanston, north of Chicago but still accessible by el train, and the wind chill hit minus 86 degrees with a daytime high of minus 33 degrees.