Summer Time, Ice Tea, lemondade, and a Window Fan
It’s been really hot here lately. This morning I went outside and thought I would melt before I could get back inside my air conditioned house.
My grandparents lived in a 100 year old farmhouse that didn’t have a lot of modern conveniences. My grandfather would joke and tell me to come back and visit him in December if I wanted air conditioning. I spent a lot of time at their house in my younger years and while I know it was hot, it never seemed unbearably so. The large trees in their yard provided plenty of shade and there were always box fans in the windows. Grandma had an unlimited supply of iced tea and lemonade (both were homemade, not store bought). They also had a swing on the front porch where I sipped lemonade and played “guess which color car will go by next” with my grandmother. Summer time at their house was a place to make memories, no matter how high the thermometer rose.
My friend Dorothy has a son who is in Iraq. His name is Chris and she spoke with him this weekend and according to him, our heat wave is nothing. I looked it up online and today in Iraq it’s supposed to get up to 113. Glad I’m not there (for lots of reasons), but so proud of those who are there serving our country! (Keep your cool, Chris, you’ll be home in 70 days!)
After I looked up the temperature in Iraq I did a little research about how hot it gets in Kentucky. Did you know that on July 28th, 1930 it reached 114 degrees in Greensburg, Kentucky? Now that’s what I call hot!
More Hot Air
My parents had an air conditioner at our house. It was the kind that fit in a window and froze you if you sat next to it but it never really managed to cool the whole house. Years later we had one of those units upstairs at my parent’s house. My husband and I were living upstairs and the air conditioning system they had just wasn’t strong enough to cool our bedroom in the summer months. When we replaced the old heating and cooling system my husband removed the old window unit from our bedroom window. Unfortunately, he dropped it. Fortunately no one was beneath it when it fell and splattered into a million pieces.
Now days most folks won’t consider buying or building a house that doesn’t have central heat and air, and I am one of those folks. I don’t like being too hot or too cold. I’m like Goldilocks…I want everything just right.
We took “the granddaughter” (I can call her that because I only have one!) to see Toy Story 3 last night (really cute movie) and the air was turned up so high in the theatre that I had goose bumps and was shaking all over. Why in the world does it have to be 30 degrees in the movies when it’s June and 90 degrees outside?
Another place I’ve noticed that can’t regulate the temperature to suit me (or other folks) is in schools. I have worked in schools all across the state of Kentucky and it drives me crazy to see kids wearing sweatshirts in May because the air conditioning is so cold it freezes them.
Okay, I’ve complained enough about the weather for one day. Now it’s your turn. Is it too hot or too cold where you are? Have you ever been somewhere and almost turned into an ice cube because the air conditioning was too high? Do you have summer time memories of your grandparent’s house and did they have air conditioning? Let us hear about it!
I had forgotten about how loud the air conditioner was! We had to turn the tv up to hear it over the air. It’s a wonder we didn’t all go deaf!
Sounds like your grandparents were important to your childhood. That’s what I’m trying to encourage here at NanaHood! Blessings to you!
I couldn’t sleep on concrete either. Sounds miserable!
I have never been to south Texas but would love to visit sometime…when it’s cooler!
I grew up with no air conditioning in our house or school, and I’m in South Texas, so it was hot! Although not nearly so hot as it seems to be the last few years. I’m one of those who believes in this climate change business. We used to be able to vacation and camp comfortably in June. This June the heat has already been brutal.
Getting back to my childhood, I remember the friend whose family was first to get air conditioning. They kept all the windows draped for efficiency, and going into their house was like going into a cool cave. It was quite a change from my house, where we kept the windows open and the curtains pulled back to get a breeze. I still can’t stand a dark house.
Our house had no air conditioning, and on some nights that were like today’s temperature, my Daddy would take a quilt and go out on the front porch (on bare concrete floor!) and sleep–so of course, I had to go with him a time or two. I didn’t last–that concrete was too hard for my little bony arms and legs and I went back to my bed and laid with my head at the foot of it so I’d catch any breeze that might come in the window. Oh, yesssss! central air/heat is nice!!
It’s in the 90s with “code orange” humidity and air quality, meaning it feels more like 100 here in VA. We’ve been keeping cool in the pool – and in church. Our church is one place that always seems WAY TOO COLD – do they think that will help you stay awake? I stay awake, but am usually too cold to concentrate on the sermon… sigh.
I have wonderful memories of my Grandparents’ house in the summer. They didn’t have air conditioning, so we stayed downstairs during the day and slept with the windows open at night. They lived on a rather busy road (compared with the subdivision road we lived on) and I used to lay and listen to the traffic as I went to sleep.
During the day, we shot BB guns with my Grandpa: shooting into milk jugs filled with water (the water squirted out when you hit the jug) and tin cans (the bbs rattled around inside) – so cool! My Grandpa also built this huge swingset. You could swing high enough to touch the leaves of the huge tree (oak? maple?) and then jump clear over the ivy onto the driveway. I still can’t believe my Mom let us do that. Grandma was infamous for her cheese toast “soldiers” and her spaghetti and meatballs… and her soap operas. I don’t think my Mom approved, but watching soaps was THE THING to do with Grandma.
I wouldn’t trade those hot summer days for ANYTHING! My Grandfather passed away a few years back and the house was sold. I really wanted to buy it, but it is too far from dh’s job to be practical… and so a new family lives there now, creating their own memories.
If only I could go back in time, even just for a day!
Oh my, I think I just wrote a second Making Memories Monday post – on your blog this time. I am hoping to do a post on the swing set one of these days. If I can just find a photo to show how incredibly TALL and BIG it was!
Thanks for linking up to Making Memories Monday, and for triggering my memories of my very lovely Grandparents. I miss them!
It’s going to be around 100 degrees here in Dallas all this week and I’m so thankful for my air conditioning! My grandmother had the the old big box window water cooler. The kind that made all of the drawers in the chest-of-drawers hard to open. I guess all the humidity made the wood swell. My parents had the window air conditioner like yours. It was so loud in that room you had to yell to be heard. The room where it was located was freezing and we used oscillating fans to try and move some of the air to the other rooms. 🙂 Sweet memories, but, oh my, central air is so much better! I could never understand why my school was so cold, either. My little first grade students used to put their arms inside their shirts to keep warm. What a waste of tax dollars!