>>Valley Patriot>> |
You must
remember that in those days people living in the cities
grew up mostly in three- and four-decker houses and the
only form of air circulation was a folded newspaper or a
rickety-old noisy fan that pushed hot air feebly around
the room while all the windows were open. Now that my wife and I live in a modern Town House that is blessed with central air conditioning, I do not know how we did it then. I guess we were all a lot younger and in general had a slower pace of life in those days, and accepted the fact that heat and humidity were part of the summer scene. In addition, we didn’t constantly talk about the hot weather. Our family was luckier than most, as we grew up on the top of a high hill in a big house which to my brother and me always seemed cool. Since we were out of school for the summer, we went swimming at a nearby lake — after hiking over to it on foot — goofing around with our pals most of the day, reading comic books on the big wrap-around porch in the afternoons and not really concerned with the heat. We used to go down the hill and watch my grandfather and his five sons work in the foundry area where they molded metal from blast furnaces all day long. Coming home after such a day must have seemed a lot cooler to them. When we got a little older, we boys started to earn some summer money by caddying across town at the country club, if we were lucky enough to be called from the caddy shack. What I remember most about this first employment was the ordeal to get to the club from my home. It took two buses with a transfer, a one-mile walk down the railroad tracks to the club, and then the long wait if some late-in-the-day golfers needed our services. We were only kids, but those golfers carried every club invented at the time, including umbrellas, golf ball retrievers and heavy leather bags. Sometimes we even carried doubles — two bags — and the most I ever earned on those back breaking rounds was $1.00, which included a 25-cent tip, all for eight hours of work. Caddying is a thing of the past, now, with the advent of golf carts. But because of this experience, even today I do not carry many clubs in my bag. One of the big treats of the summer was the arrival of the iceman to the neighborhood. Each home had an icebox which held between a 25 and 50 pound cake of ice, which melted into a drip pan under the box. It was my job to empty the water into the flowerbeds before it slopped over into the hallway — which it often did. The iceman would look up into the windows of the house where a card would be placed indicating the number of pounds to be delivered to either the first, second or top floors. He would chip apart the huge ice blocks in the truck, sling the ice onto his rubber back protector, and proceed to his delivery. This was the time for all kids in the neighborhood to jump up on the back of the truck and get some of the ice chips to suck on — oh, they were so good on a hot day! Ice chips from the ice truck on a hot day were just a memorable part of growing up and trying to stay cool. One day, as we sucked our ice chips, I remember seeing a dog chasing a cat, but they were both only walking — boy that was a hot day! I guess that is where they coin the expression, “the dog days of August.” Many homes did not have screens, but out of necessity the windows had to be thrown wide open. Remember the sticky flypaper that hung around the rooms filled with trapped dead flies? UGH! On hot evenings we walked with mom and dad to a McCann’s ice cream shop. I think McCann’s shops were located in most large cities, but I distinctly remember you could purchase this ice cream for ten cents a pint in its original carton and the carton could be cut in half for a nickel cost. What a treat and a bargain. It was so cheap, it melted like water and the shop was awash with the run offs. McCann’s ice cream was another cold tasty treat in August when we moved through another hot spell. Those days are gone, now, with the advent of air conditioning, swimming pools and many other cooling devices, including weathermen who make a living predicting the next onslaught of a heat wave. Although we
may have suffered, we didn’t complain as much and
still had fun in “the Good Old Summertime”. *Send your questions
comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com |
The
recent hot spell of this last July got me thinking of
just how we “older folks” en-dured summer heat
waves when we were growing up in the ‘30s and ‘40s
— before the advent of air conditioners and the
like.