Frozen in Time
The hottest month of all
By Deborah Salomon
August means hot. Serious hot.
Not that hot means much. We’re such weather wimps — dash from AC car to AC house, or store, or office. As the joke goes, were there still phone booths, they would be air-conditioned. A system failure rates emergency status, right up there with a blocked toilet or a computer meltdown.
Meltdown, a good August word when applied to an orange Popsicle that tints the tongue and stains the T-shirt.
In August, you can do without lights but not that icy AC blast.
Global warming will only exacerbate this annual woe.
I am the wimp described above. ’Twas not always so. I remember when the very heat we flee heightened our senses, prescribed our activities.
I spent every childhood summer in Greensboro, with my grandparents, in the house shaded by pin oaks, where my mother was born.
Talk about hot.
This isn’t the first time, or the second or third I’ve dredged up those summers not out of laziness but regret, since icons have drifted away like August afternoon clouds, once their rain has caused steam to rise from the asphalt.
In the North, at least, summer started with spring and the wearing of “spring coats.” Lordy, I haven’t heard that word pairing in years. By late spring, kids were allowed to shed undershirts . . . ah, the freedom, the unbinding. The last day of school meant a trip to the shoe store for sturdy leather sandals or breathable canvas “sneakers.” Both would be in tatters by Labor Day.
Where have all the children’s shoe stores gone?
How delicious, the wiggling of bare toes, unknown to kids shod year-round in “running shoes.”
Polio overshadowed those summers. No large gatherings, no swimming pools or amusement parks. Splash pads had not been invented but oh, what we could accomplish with a garden hose and a variable nozzle. Squeals of horror followed a strong, pulsating stream. “Mmmm . . . ” after a total-body misting. I remember feeling the heat rising up and escaping from my skin, whether bare or covered with shorts and a T-shirt.
Nobody bothered with bathing suits.
Then, somebody told us that holding an ice cube in back of a bended knee would cool the whole body. What giggles, as the melt trickled down our legs. Another granny advised soaking feet in cold water worked the same magic. I can still see the oval tin wash basin we used for soaking.
But nothing — and I mean nothing — cooled better than a nickel Coca-Cola from the big red cooler (with built-in bottle opener) at the corner store.
My mother didn’t allow soft drinks. Granddaddy slipped me nickels when she wasn’t looking.
Those power-guzzling coolers, now prized retro décor, fetch big bucks at antique stores.
Supper on hot nights would be cold: cold fried chicken, potato salad, huge tomatoes from the garden, sprinkled with salt. Maybe biscuits left over from breakfast. I don’t remember the house being unbearable at night, perhaps because of oscillating fans, more likely because children sleep better, especially happy children exhausted from squealing through the sprinkler, catching fireflies in Mason jars, guzzling Kool-Aid, wiggling toes around leather sandal straps, reading comic books on the porch swing, playing stick-ball, dressing paper dolls.
AC? Only at the movie theater where the blast merited a sweater.
We survived August, then returned to the North, where autumn appeared in chilly early mornings and earlier sunsets, when children bought notebooks and pencil-sharpeners, rulers, protractors, lunch boxes, knee socks and saddle shoes for school. Before cellphones and laptops and face masks and lockdowns.
Before schools became dangerous. PS
Deborah Salomon is a writer for PineStraw and The Pilot. She may be reached at debsalomon@nc.rr.com.
