Heat….here in Illinois we have plenty of it. Today promises to be a carbon copy of yesterday, about 103 in the shade. Unlike Arizona, we can’t even say “it’s a dry heat” because humidity reigns supreme here in the Midwest. While sitting up at the hospital with my dad yesterday, the subject of summers past came up with my brothers, Don and Bill. They were reminiscing about the summer of 1954. No air conditioning anywhere and 115 degrees actual temperature….not even accounting for humidity. I’d like to pretend that I wasn’t here yet, but I was. Just a mere baby.
I recall like it was yesterday the big box fan with its huge blades that sat on a crate in front of the window in the back bedroom. Every screened window in the house was open, and even though the fan was doing its best, sleeping was still miserable. There was just no way to get comfortable.
Come morning, it wasn’t any better because mom cranked up the stove to cook. There just seemed to be no escape from the heat. I do remember asking mom if I could help hang the clothes out to dry on the line. No, it wasn’t just to help her. It was to handle the cool, wet clothes. I’m sure she probably knew that.
The house was just unbearably hot. My sister Darlene would wash her auburn locks and then sit outside in a kitchen chair to twist pin curls into her hair…until I ran over her ingrown toenail with the tireless rim of my tricycle, which cut her beauty routine short and sent me scrambling for cover.
We had a rectangular green vinyl wading pool with metal seats in the four corners, and we loved it when mom would fill it up and we could flop around in it. Of course, the way my sisters and I were brought up, swimming attire was an old dress; but we didn’t care. All we wanted was a chance to cool off. Even our yellow chow, King, gave in to the heat and climbed into a washtub full of water, leaving little more than his nose sticking out.
Once in a while we would be given a nickel to run down to the corner market and get a popsicle or my favorite to this day, a Dreamsicle. There is nothing so wonderful as cold ice cream and orange sherbet touching your tongue, and feeling it cool all the way down your parched throat. I remember the price creeping up to six cents, then seven, and at that point my dad was done…they were just getting too expensive.
At some point in the sixties, Sam’s Market disappeared, and an ice cream truck would tour the neighborhood clanging it’s bell and sending kid’s running for money. I will never forget my sister Sheryl driving the boy across the street crazy with a cowbell as she hid behind bushes and made her way from the front yard to the back, making it sound as though the “ice cream truck” was nearing and then driving away. He would run for all he was worth screaming, “MOM, the ice cream man, the ice cream man!” And then sadly, “HE’S LEAVING, HURRY, HE’S LEAVING!.” Mean? Maybe. But hilarious to watch. We had to do something to keep from going mad from the heat.
The heat hindered everything you tried to do. You could dress up and go to church, but by the time you arrived your hair was sweated down into a million ringlets. There was no air conditioning there either, so the best you could hope for was a “funeral home” fan, stiff cardboard stapled to a stick.
I remember standing at the foot of the old church steps waiting to march in for Vacation Bible School. The sun was scortching hot and I began to feel sick. The next thing I knew, everything started turning dark and I heard someone yell, “ She’s goin’ down…grab her!” I don’t remember anything else until I woke up in the cool, damp dungeon of a creepy church basement with the old lady I was most terrified of standing over me with a damp cloth. Mom used to call her an old saint, but to me she was just the old hag who narrowed her eyes and pointed a bony finger at you if you talked in church. She seemed kinder somehow that day and I began to think she may actually be human…still scary, but human nonetheless.
For the past couple of years, it definitely seems like the heat is on in my life. My husband fell on the ice and broke his hip; I had pneumonia; my son lost his job; our dearest friend lost his leg to complications of diabetes, then I lost my Mother, and just recently my job. My daughter’s fiance was diagnosed with a life-altering illness, and my 98 year old Dad is right now in his third week at the hospital. The trips back and forth and the uncertainty of it all are getting to the entire family. Sleeping is difficult and it’s hard to catch a mental break.
All I can figure from this whole thing is that we must be doing something right. The three Hebrew children were obviously doing something right, and that’s what landed them in the fiery furnace. The encouraging thing, though, is that the Lord brought them out, and incidentally, the only thing that was burned was the ropes that bound them.
The Bible talks about the times of refreshing, and I like to think of it as plunging headlong into a deep blue pool of cool, cool water and popping up renewed. I could use that about now….along with a Dreamsicle. Yeah, that sounds good.
Wishing you cool times ahead.
Janice
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Written: 08/09/2010
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Category: Janice Crow
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"I will never forget my sister Sheryl driving the boy across the street crazy with a cowbell as she hid behind bushes and made her way from the front yard to the back, making it sound as though the “ice cream truck” was nearing and then driving away. He would run for all he was worth screaming, “MOM, the ice cream man, the ice cream man!” And then sadly, “HE’S LEAVING, HURRY, HE’S LEAVING!.”
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