The Heat

So how are you doing in the heat?  We’re doing pretty well.  We have air conditioning and a pool.  But it wasn’t always that way.  I was thinking about the years we did without both of those things.  I remember sitting in the balcony at my grandma’s church for the evening service.  It was so hot and uncomfortable!  I was always told that you should try and sit still when you’re hot and you’ll cool down.  OK, I get it now—good trick, Grandma—fib to the child, so she’ll stop squirming….

In the summer, fans were tucked in the hymn book rack for the congregants to use.  They were made of a thick kind of paper and were usually illustrated with some kind of Bible scene.  They each had a handle that looked like an oversized popsicle stick.   Grandma used to tell me not to fan so hard—it would only make me hotter.  You’d think I was doing aerobics with the thing….anyway—the whole experience was rather unpleasant.  But that’s the way it was back then.  There were a lot of small stores that had no a/c.  We lived in Missouri for a while when I was young, and I remember going to a restaurant a time or two where you sat at long tables and passed the food family style.  They made great fried chicken, I remember that.  I also remember the little individual pats of butter melting on the table because there was no a/c.  Nope there sure wasn’t. 

I also remember lying in bed unable to sleep because of the heat.  Mom would suggest putting a damp washcloth on my forehead.  What?  And just how long is that going to cool a person, I ask you?  One night it was so ridiculously hot in the house that one of my brothers and I ended up lying on the floor in front of the open front door with our heads on the threshold just trying to catch a breeze!  Now that’s just plain pathetic.  Actually, as I think about it now, it seems just plain ridiculous not to have had the benefits of air conditioning for so long.  What’s worse is that we made our own kids suffer in the heat too, probably because we grew up that way.   What the heck was wrong with us!  I mean, really, a small air conditioner can be picked up for $100.  You don’t have $100 to throw around?  Sell some stuff on ebay.  Take a paper route for a couple of weeks.  Cut back on junk food, for Pete’s sake—just get yourself a darn air conditioner!