Do simpler times equal cooler weather?

Opinion

July 30, 2012

Do simpler times equal cooler weather?

Editor and Publisher John H. Walker The Daily Southerner Mon Jul 30, 2012, 03:24 PM EDT

TARBORO — I heard a now-common question of summer the other day … “How did people survive before they got air conditioners?”

It’s an easy question for me to relate to, as I was in the ninth grade when Mom and I moved to Greenville, Miss. and the guys from the Firestone store showed up one morning to put a window unit in the living room of our home.

Other than going to a cousin’s house with air (his daddy sold Philco appliances), that was my first experience with air at home. Even with that, we had an attic fan with what seemed to be an airplane-sized blade that kept the house reasonable … with the exception of the worst days.

And along the Mississippi River in the Mississippi Delta, there were some dog days of summer that were real mutts!

But how did we survive?

Probably by not knowing there was an option. Except for sweet tea, there were all of the caffeine and sugar-laced drinks we have today … and the fast food places were few and far between.

In Louise, Miss., we had Cook’s Tastee-Freeze, where you could get a hamburger, cold drink or malt on one side and a haircut on the other. There was a little café down on the main street, but we never went there.

For us, fast food meant that Mom had been in a hot kitchen and the food would be served quickly! And my goodness, how wonderful her black-eyed peas and butterbeans and cream style corn and cornbread were!

Those vegetables either came from our garden or Granny Walker’s garden, and that in itself was a lesson in dealing with heat.

Summers were spent shelling all types of pea and bean on her back porch … unless you got the chance to pull duty on the butter churn, which we kids thought was more treat than work.

When her house filled with “young’uns,” as she call us, some would sleep in the various bedrooms and some would sleep on the back porch under the safety of a screen porch.

There were fans to move the air around and, if the weather cooled, then they moved cool air around the house!

Americans were tougher then. We were more resilient and, I believe, less demanding.

Nowadays, we are too good for tap water, opting to drink what may well be tap water that comes from a plastic bottle.

On Friday, I talked with someone about holding a homemade ice cream contest — but who makes his or her own any more? And if they do, is it from a hand crank churn or an electric one?

Homemade ice cream was an occasional Sunday treat at Granny’s and, when we had it, it included fresh strawberries or peaches that had been washed and sliced on her back porch.

When there was no ice cream, but the watermelons were still producing, there were always an abundance of smile-producing melons. We’d climb over the barbed-wire fence (or through it if you were short like my cousin, Benny) and go thumping for melons.

“You young’uns watch out for snakes, now!” Granny would yell, drying her hands on her apron as her bonnet shielded her head from the sun and we race through the melon vines.

Based on today’s prices, there’s no telling how many thousands of dollars in melons we broke open in the field before grabbing a handful of the heart and shoveling it in our mouths.

As I’ve reflected on those years, I think I remember how we survived the heat … we were always doing something and we never really noticed how hot it really was as we gathered out there on Granny’s hilltop on Fellowship Road in Smith County, Miss.

Could it be that simpler also equates to cooler?

Just a thought.

(John H. Walker is editor and publisher of the Daily Southerner and may be reached at 823-3106 or jwalker@dailysoutherner.com.)

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