Dear Hearts and Gentle People
On a lighter, but hotter, note...

How about this weather??

Do you wonder how in the world we middle-agers and older ever survived without air-conditioning?

I don't.

We had no other choice. We made do. And not only did we survive....we thrived.

We looked forward to summertime even though we knew we'd be sweating buckets and having to sleep with the windows open while a fan the size of a Boeing 747 blew everything out of the house but the bed we were sleeping on.

We enjoyed crawling in between cool bed sheets only to find them stuck to us by morning, wound tight from flipping over dozens of times during the night trying to get comfortable. The fan, mounted inside the window frame, shook the whole house and its drone lulled us to sleep better than Brahams ever could.

Summertime was glorious despite the high temperatures and, no, it isn't any hotter today than it was then. Global warming wasn't a threat, insects were. Flies, mosquitos, and ants were plentiful but window screens and fly-swatters were God-sends and I don't remember complaining all that much about bugs, or anything else for that matter. Heck, it was summertime!

Give us kids a pitcher of ice cold Kool Aid and a garden hose and we were in heaven. One-hundred degrees in the shade, it didn't matter. We stayed outside all day long and had to be forced to come inside way after dark. No wonder kids (and adults) are overweight. Leave us outside all day to find water and entertainment and I'll bet we'd slim up pretty fast.

What ever happened to bicycles? Water guns? Porches? Wading pools? Tree climbing?

Time was when a kid's only two transportations during the summer were feet and bicycles. Funny, I don't remember kids dying of heat stroke back then like they do today. If it was hot, we had sense enough to find shelter in the shade of an old oak, grab a swig of cool water from the neighbor's water hose, run naked in the sprinkler, or take refuge in the swing on the front porch. A nice ripe watermelon busted over a rock and eaten on the spot didn't hurt either.

I get amused at all the hoopla about old people and severe heat. Shelters abound during the summer months offering relief to elderly folks who might not have air conditioning in their homes. All I can say is, if other senior citizens are like my mother they don't want one. Temperatures in the triple digits energize my mother in ways even a shot of B-12 can't.

Be it December, May, or the dead of summer my mother's response to the weather is to say: "I'm freezing!" I kid you not, I have walked into my mother's house on a blistering summer day and felt as if I were entering a steam room.

"I just stay so cold," she says.

Trust me, dear hearts, old people have no fear of summertime. Maybe their blood "runs cold" the older they get. Whatever the reason, they are in their element on the hottest days of the year. They love the heat. It's what they know. It's how they were raised. It helps their arthritis.

I spent the night with my mother following her surgery a couple of months ago and, despite a floor fan at the foot of my bed set at mach speed, by the time the sun came up I had lost fifteen pounds. My mother, fresh as a daisy, greeted me as I dragged my sweat soaked body to the kitchen. "Like some hot coffee?" she chirped.

Now my mother has air conditioning. She just prefers not to use it.

Mama's generation is tough. They know how to cope with most anything life can throw at them, including hot weather. In truth, many of us grew up able to cope with the heat but have gone soft with the invention of the A.C.

I remember Sundays as a child and the obligatory afternoon nap. We'd go to church, eat a lunch of fried chicken, and fried everything else, then head for the bedroom to snooze for an hour or two.

And while we're on the subject of good summer eatin', just when did plain white bread become the consumer's worst enemy? In my humble but accurate opinion, to eat a fresh tomato sandwich on anything other than white bread is culinary sacrilege.

Back to Sunday....The old fan blaring, my sister and I would lie down across our chennile bedspread, sleep, then wake up with saliva drool coming out the sides of our mouths and imprints of the chennile spread across our faces. Always good for a couple of laughs.

Later on in the day if we were lucky somebody, usually Uncle Jip and Aunt Marie, would call and invite us all over for a churn of "fresh cream." Manna from heaven could not have tasted better.

Come to think of it, I seldom see folks 'round town eating ice-cream cones anymore, a daily staple in the summetime when I was young. Skipping down the street licking the sugary stuff as it melted all down your hands and arms was about as good as it could get on a hot summer day.

Homemade ice-cream was available, as well, but usually on special occasions. Peach, banana, vanilla....it was worth the wait and every second of hard churning to taste the first spoonful of that delectable treat.

I don't remember ever having been at a loss for something to do outside during summer vacation. No computers, no cell phones, no fourwheelers, no i-pods....just our imaginations and lots of free time to explore, learn, and have good fun.

Dare I say it? Today's generation is full of weather-wimps. Coddled and cooled at every turn we still gripe and complain the first time the temperature hits 80.

Consider the conversation of a few years back between a customer and my uncle in his appliance store.

"Mr. Jip. I need an air conditioner," the man said to my uncle.

"How many BTUs do you need?" replied my uncle.

"Do what?" the man said.

"How many BTUs does your air conditioner need to have?"

"Well, Mr. Jip. I needs one with enough BTUs to cool a B-U-T as big as a T-U-B."

Suck it up, dear hearts. Take your tub sized derrrieres outside and enjoy the sun. Make yourselves a tomato sandwich on white bread, top it off with an ice-cream cone, then take a nap in a room with a window fan. You'll feel like a kid again and, what's more, you'll be as cool as a cucumber.