"Colder Than a Joan Crawford Kiss"

Writing in The Telegraph, Joseph Epstein explores winter in Chicago. An excerpt:

As a boy I remember some of these Chicago winds striking my face with the force of an insulting slap. I used to take two buses to get from home to high school, and the waiting time between buses could seem longer than two bad fiscal quarters. Down coats or hooded parkas were not in vogue, or even, so far as I know, invented. In those days I wore a leather jacket. I also sported an ambitious hairdo – rather a pathetic imitation of the still youngish Tony Curtis – that precluded my wearing a hat. Vanity, in other words, won out over warmth.