Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer

Trudging back from the Courthouse this afternoon, I wondered how we ever survived without air conditioning. I stopped at the bank to make deposits expecting a cool oasis but sadly they were having problems with their air conditioning and it was hot and stuffy. I sympathized with the tellers and headed back into the heat. The warmth of the day radiated up from the concrete and brick as I whined and complained the entire block and a half back to my office. It still took at least thirty minutes for my old bones to cool off when I settled down at my desk. As if an answer to my wondering, I heard Gillian Welch singing on WNKU about a pallet on the floor. That was the answer…that was what we did in the summertime before we had air conditioning. On many a hot day Grandma would spread a quilt out on the floor and let us lie in front of her big floor fan. We would nap quietly as the humming lulled us to sleep. On other days we would rump through the yard as she watered her grass, running in and out of the water’s stream. My grandma made feather beds that were just the size of the lounge chairs in her back yard and in the evenings my grandfather would lie there under the shade of an old tree with a glass of Weidman beer and we'd sit in the cool grass nearby, oblivious to the chiggers that would torture us later. On rare occasions my grandma would allow my Aunt Sheila to walk me across busy Washington Avenue to the municipal swimming pool. The water was only 3’ at the deepest part but a young imagination could make-believe it was an ocean. Once or twice each summer, Aunt Sheila and I would ride the bus through Bellevue and Dayton and spend a day at Tacoma Pool. Later when we lived on the boat, my mom and dad would take us out into the middle of the Ohio River where we would jump off the bow and float around in our life-jackets. Ahh…… the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.