Hot.

(From late summer 2018)

            Yes, we’ve had some hot weather already this pre-summer.  Some years it scarcely makes it into the 90s, and already we’ve had numerous days that have been around the mid-90s.

            I generally don’t mind hot weather, as long as I don’t need to do anything.  People who work outside during hot weather have my sympathy and respect.  Carpenters, roofers, highway construction workers, and even lifeguards who, if things go well, mostly sit, but still bake under that oven above.

            Thinking back to my humble beginnings, our house in Oshkosh didn’t have air conditioning, and had virtually no insulation.  Fortunately, it was a shady lot.

            Each spring my dad would install a machine that was part window fan and part jet engine.  The idea was that it would pull the hot air from all over the house out through the kitchen window while pulling in the cool night air to replace it.  I admit that it did a pretty good job of it, but if the nighttime air was still hot, it didn’t help much at all.  And, the fan was known to sometimes grab the long hair of my sisters if they got too close.

            Our house had been a duplex, and as such there were two large screen porches; one for each floor.  They provided some respite from the stale (my parents both smoked) inside air.

            Back then I did plenty of nothing on hot days, but also played baseball or tennis.  Something about being young made the temperature less important when it came to sports.  We went everywhere on our bikes and that allowed us to make our own wind.

            My dad would take us swimming, either at the Lake Winnebago beach or the Fox River beach.  The water wasn’t very clean, but the good news was that we didn’t know how badly the water had been polluted.  We didn’t grow any extra limbs, so that was good.

            In those days I only knew a couple of people with air conditioning.  I never considered that my family would ever get it.  In fact, when my parents built their “retirement home” years later they had only a window unit which they used grudgingly because of the cost.

            One nice memory I have of hot summer days is sitting at the dining room table, not far from the dreaded fan, and playing cards with my mom.  That happened maybe ten times over the years, and yet I remember those times very clearly.

            It’s trite to say that hot days – all days, really – were simpler then.  It’s also true.