Football, lottery tickets, cigarettes worth the freeze

CORAOPOLIS, Pennsylvania (AP):

Certain essentials must be taken care of, no matter what. As a record freeze hit this hard-luck town outside Pittsburgh early Tuesday, basic needs came down to football, lottery tickets, and cigarettes. Especially cigarettes.

Dangerously frigid air arrived in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, from the Midwest, borne by a biting wind that pulled smoke horizontally from the factory chimneys along the Ohio River. With yesterday's school already cancelled and local TV news issuing dire warnings, the mile-long main drag fell silent except for a few cars and the rumble of freight trains running two blocks over.

None of the town's 5,664 residents are outside until you reach the Uni-Mart on the corner of Main and Fifth.

Quentin Milliner walks in and asks for a pack of Marlboros. He's not cold: "I spent two years in Alaska," he says. "This isn't cold."

When he walks out, the bank clock across the street reads 9:13 p.m. and -3 degrees. On the 10-minute walk home, Milliner is wearing jeans but no thermals, two shirts, a coat, and a Pittsburgh Penguins hat pulled down to the top of his Pittsburgh Steelers scarf.