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SUNDAY JOURNAL

Warming to memories of long, hot summers

By LINDA HUMPHERS
Published August 20, 2006

Albert and I were idly chatting one summer day when I said, "I believe this heat wave is overwhelming me more than usual."

Albert, who grew up in Savannah, Ga., but now lives up North, said he knew exactly what I meant, that he'd just been in Savannah and the heat there was oppressive. "It just makes you WILT," he said. "I can't believe I've gotten so unaccustomed to what it's like there. And it never goes away. It's even hot at NIGHT."

Like many Southern men, Albert punches his words. He went on: "The AIR conditioning in my mother's condo was screwed up, so we had to sit around and wait for the A/C guy to come. It was like being in a Tennessee Williams PLAY, sitting sockless in underwear, holding an ice tea, windows open, waiting for relief."

I told him that I remember hearing myself sweat. "My mother would stick me in a tub of cold water that she'd sprinkled with baking soda, then put me to bed with the attic fan running. I still love cool baths and showers."

He said his mother would give him a dime and send him down to the public pool, and at night he slept in a small room with a window fan. "I'd go to sleep on top of the sheets wearing nothing but a pair of gym shorts, but sometime in the middle of the night I'd wake up FREEZING and pull a thin sheet over me. It would be JUST enough to get me through the night."

I said my father would drink hot coffee to induce sweating - he swore it cooled him off. I'd stand in front of the open icebox drinking cold water out of a glass milk bottle. "Remember how the mid-afternoon air would shimmer from the heat?" I said.

Albert recalled how the asphalt would seem to melt, and how the smell of it would make your nostrils hot.

He harkened back to a day when he was motionless in his front yard and there wasn't a whisper of a breeze. "It must have been 1:30 or 2 in the afternoon," he said, "just before the clouds had started gathering for the daily thunderstorm. My mother would CURSE those storms - 'They don't do anything but steam things up,' " she'd say.

"Oh, the afternoon thunderstorms," I said. "In St. Pete around 4 every day we had these great, drenching downpours with wild, swirling winds and huge sharp, stinging raindrops - rain splinters, really, rain spikes - and lightning crashing all around you, scaring you to death, thunder bursting your eardrums. If you were caught in them, running for cover, no matter what you did you got SOAKED, and it felt wonderful."

I told Albert his mother was right about the steam rising after the violent downpours: "The air would be fresh and cool for a few minutes, then the sun would blast out and melt it all away, leaving everything soggy and smelling like garbage."

Luckily, dusk and the sweet scent of night-blooming jasmine soon followed - no daylight saving time to drag out our molten misery, our tropical torpor - and we'd have supper, usually sliced tomatoes and cold cuts. "When it got dark, everyone in the neighborhood would go outside," I said. "We'd all sit in lawn chairs talking until it was time for bed."

Then Albert got an odd look on his meaty face and said, "But there were days when the sweat felt goooood."

He went on: "I remember football practices in August, my face close to the ground, blinking away sweat to try to see clearly, then the play would begin. My calf would tighten on the first step, and the HEAT and the SWEAT would OIL my joints and I'd be praying for a tackle. I'd work my way along the line and figure out the flow of the play and push off people's backs as they fell and feel their HOT SWEAT through their shirts. The heat made me so focused and so viciously ANGRY that all I wanted to do was throw my body FULL FORCE into an oncoming player and knock him to the ground, sweat dripping everywhere and my own breath heavy and loud . . . a feeling of CONQUEST and exhilaration . . . and immediately I'd be hot again and want more and more and - "

"ALBERT!" I shouted. And we laughed and laughed.

Linda Humphers lives in Clearwater.

[Last modified August 18, 2006, 08:22:39]