My grandfather had a colorful way of describing people who had what he considered an excessive vulnerability to cold weather ... but then, he had a variety of colorful expressions. Sadly, I cannot share most of them with you in their full majesty.

The one that pertained to folks who got cold easily implied that somehow, their urinary tracts had become cross-connected to their bloodstreams.

At times, I wonder if I’ve become one of them.

Back in the day, the cold didn’t bother me all that much, and sometimes it still doesn’t. How much depends entirely upon how hard the wind is blowing.

Last Tuesday, as I was out and about, the combination of temperature and wind led me to use a few more of Grandfather Goldsworthy’s colorful expressions. I didn’t have to be out and about; it was a matter of choice. Granddad would have said, “That boy is as dumb as a coal scuttle.”

All things considered, it hasn’t been all that cold. I remember calling my parents one Christmas Eve to say I wouldn’t be making the trip from Cumberland to Keyser until daylight because it was 15 degrees below zero, and there was a foot of snow on the ground. People whose cars break down at night in conditions like that can die. Mom and Dad understood; they didn’t raise their son to be as dumb as a coal scuttle.

I keep the thermostat in my 100-year-old, three-storied house (four, if you count both the basement and attic, which has windows) at 63 degrees. It’s heated with a 50-year-old gas furnace and hot water radiators, and that’s not inexpensive.

When I was a kid, the gas companies had TV commercials that boasted how much cheaper it was to heat a house with natural gas than electricity. They referred to the “All-Gas House Of Savings.” I can only imagine what my grandfather would have to say about that. But it doesn’t bother me. I dress warmly and seem to have fewer colds since I live in a relatively chilly house.

In an effort to keep warm, Frank Calemine bought a wood stove for his All-Electric-Not-Exactly-A-House-Of-Savings.

I stayed overnight one time and was awakened by the smell of smoke and the screeching of smoke alarms. Frank had started a fire and didn’t wait until getting a good updraft before opening the stove door to put more wood inside. Cold air from outside cascaded down the chimney and blew out enough cinders, smoke and ash to coat the living room.

The stove went to live with Frank’s daughter and son-in-law soon after that.

My first Jeep was a Commando model that was responsible for taking me safely from Keyser to Cumberland during snowstorms when we had to be at work at 7 a.m. to put out the old Evening Times, and the snow plows might not have put in an appearance on Route 220 by that time of day.

Old Jeeps were notorious for having impotent heaters. The one in my Commando was barely sufficient to keep the windshield defrosted, and I wore long underwear, a sweat shirt, a hooded parka, a wool cap and the heaviest coat I had — a 1940s vintage Army trench coat with a wool blanket lining.

I no longer have the Jeep, but I still wear the trench coat on the coldest days. It’s the most fantastic piece of clothing I own because wearing it is like wearing a space suit. The wind does not go through it and, for as battered as it looks, it keeps me warm. Our social editor swears that small animals must live in it during the off-season.

There have been two times when I was truly cold, both during deer season.

Once I was down in what we called The Deep Hollow, where you might get sunshine one hour a day. Frank said he’d taken a thermometer with him, and it was 2 degrees above zero.

I stayed out there until noon before a spike buck came out of the woods and I shot him. What I didn’t know was that my buddies had gone back to the house and were drinking coffee when they began wondering where I was.

The wind had been blowing so hard I didn’t hear them signaling me on a police whistle less than 100 yards away around a slight bend. They came out of the woods looking for me, just in time to help me drag that deer out ... and were not at all happy about having to do it.

Another time, during the pre-Weather Channel days, we went out lightly dressed when it was about 60 degrees and sunny, and there was no wind. About 10 a.m., a cold front went through and suddenly, it was below freezing. I was getting wood together and preparing to build a fire when the guys came by in a pickup truck to collect me and call it a day.

One night I was visiting some other friends, and two of us began swapping It-Was-Cold hunting stories. (The best of these that I’ve heard came from a late friend who said he needed to perform an act of drainage, but was wearing four layers of clothes and had only three layers worth of plumbing.)

My buddy’s story involved duck hunting — which means you get more than just cold. He said it was his introduction to a 10-gauge shotgun that took magnum shells, and the first time he fired it, he wound up sitting in ankle-deep water.

His father-in-law listened patiently until we had finished our stories, then went to the kitchen and got us another round of beer.

“You guys think you’ve been cold?” he asked. “I spent World War II on a fishing boat in the Aleutians, going around looking for Japs.”

Since then, I’ve met men who served during the Korean War and were among “The Frozen Chosin,” meaning they had to fight their way out of the Chosin Reservoir area after being surrounded by 60,000 Chinese troops in temperatures that reached 35 degrees below zero.

Come to think of it, the cold doesn’t bother me nearly as much as I thought it did.