Writing this from New York, it is a typical July week. While the temperatures aren't in the 90s, the humidity was incredibly high for a few days. You take a shower and then the simple act of toweling off works up a sweat. You need to soak off all over again. The vicious cycle of summer weather on the East Coast.
Oh, how I remember. It was brutal when you were an adult and working in the airless bowels of Manhattan. Drenched in perspiration by the time you reached your office at 8AM. Dreading 5PM when you would leave the air-conditioned comfort to go home. Praying that the cool air would follow you to the Metro North train up to Westchester. Only to get to your track in Grand Central Station to hear...
"Hot car."
That meant the air wasn't working. And you would get home not to remove your clothes but peel them off gingerly one layer at a time.
But, when I was a kid and had no place to go during the summer, heat and humidity wasn't necessarily a big ordeal.
Oh, who am I kidding? It was disgusting.
There would be a stretch of days, usually in July, where the heat would reach 100 degrees and the humidity in the air was as thick and damp as a dirty kitchen mop. The severity of the weather would be uttered in all corners of my house. Usually started by my mom with the title of today's blog entry.
"It's too damn hot."
Yet, off to work, she would go.
My father, of course, had little to say about most things. But, as he would head off to this night job in a Connecticut factory, Dad couldn't resist turning the torrid weather into another warning for yours truly.
"It's hot. Don't be running around like a lunatic."
Yes, sir.
So, as per usual during the summer, I'd spend most of the time home with my grandmother downstairs. And her reaction to the heat would be simply to sigh as she moved about the house.
Making her lunch of a bologna sandwich with jelly (Don't ask).
"Sigh."
Lying down on the couch for her afternoon beauty rest.
"Sigh."
Turning on the TV to watch her soap operas.
"Sigh."
Meanwhile, my beagle Tuffy would pretty much find a cool spot under the table on the dining room linoleum and not come out for hours. Until, of course, she noticed my grandmother making her way to the kitchen for dinner. That would get my dog's attention. Except, on the hottest of the hottest days, my grandmother would make the announcement....
"Oh, it's too hot to cook."
That meant supper was going to be a plate of cold cuts. I'd probably run around the corner...no, wait...walk around the corner to Charlie's Delicatessen for some German potato salad and cole slaw. Preparing a stove-less dinner. Afterwards, Grandma would go out to the backyard and sit in the beach chair. Every five minutes, she'd make the same pronouncement.
"Oh, there's no breeze."
I'd venture "up the block" to see my buddies. The hot weather usually had knocked them for a loop, too. This was not a neighborhood of great luxury. There were no backyard swimming pools. We didn't have the convenience of fine summer resorts nearby. Only Glen Island Beach in New Rochelle, which was a bus ride away. Or the dreaded and unholy Orchard...AKA "Horseshit"...Beach in the Bronx.
During the really, really hot weather, we didn't play much or have our usual after-dinner baseball game in our favorite vacant lot. Nope, when it was this sultry, we all simply languished on somebody's front steps. And waited for the arrival of the Good Humor Truck at 8:47PM every night. Then we'd all retire from the exhaustion of doing nothing.
Now, also in the less regal environs of 15th Avenue in Mount Vernon, New York, there was really no such phenomenon as central air conditioning. You'd look at the rundown apartment building across the street and see contraptions hanging out of windows. Most of them didn't enjoy this extravagance.
No, wait, we did have an air conditioner in our home. A huge, clunky piece of metal that looked like it had fallen off John Glenn's space capsule during descent. It was placed in our upstairs living room window. And, because of the electricity needed to get it going, I needed a court order to be allowed to turn it on.
"It only goes on when we say it does. Do you think we're made of money?"
So, indeed, the air conditioner really never went on until my parents were home on the weekend and the hot, steamy weather had extended to Saturday and Sundays. These days bring back some of my happier memories of doing an activity as a family. We had one of those accordion doors to close off the living room from the rest of the house. And we'd sit in air conditioned comfort to watch old movies on Channel 5 or maybe the Million Dollar Movie on Channel 9. Dinner time would come around and my grandmother's words would now be channeled into my mom.
"Oh, it's too hot to cook."
When that happened with my folks, it was a simple phone call.
"DON'T COOK TONIGHT. CALL CHICKEN DELIGHT."
And, while licking off our fingers in the living room, we'd tune into another old movie on the television.
Of course, I've already written about my most favorite lair on uncomfortable summer nights but it bears repeating on this July Sunday.
Right next to the kitchen fan.
It was usually after 9PM. My mom would be asleep in the living room on those nights when it was too hot to dream. She needed to be crisp for her morning run to work. Dad was still toiling in his factory. Grandma had long since decided that summer rerun television was for the birds and announced that it was "too hot to watch television."
There was only one place for me. Our kitchen. With the enormous fan in the window. It made the sound of the D train rushing through a local subway station. But, like ocean water crashing up against a shore, there was something oddly soothing with that loud whirring of our kitchen fan. I could listen to it for hours. And frequently did. Way up close. I was a weird kid.
And electric fans had been the way our family kept cool during the summer.
My grandmother had one mounted in her kitchen downstairs as well and that must have been how people stayed cool during World War II. Apparently, there are all sorts of scientific solutions on how to use the fan to get gusts of wind going throughout the house. It must have been handed down like family lore, because both my dad and Grandma were cooling experts.
If you're in the bedroom, you turn on the kitchen fan and then close all the doors of the house except for the room you're in. Voila. The whole opening in the home gets all the intake and you have a breeze. Naturally, I would invariably go into one of the other rooms and then I would hear the wail.
"Close the door!!"
But, after 10PM every steamy summer night, I had to be near that monster of a fan. For the breeze, but also for the noise. It shut me into my own special world. This was my "alone" time and I valued it.
So did my dog Tuffy, who would sequester herself in her sleeping box and keep me quiet company. This would be my hideaway for the next three hours.
First order of business? I'd make myself a sandwich with one of the German cold cuts my father had bought the previous Saturday morning. Usually my beloved Taylor Ham or some Cervelat. Wait, didn't I just have a Good Humor ice cream? No worries. That had to be...wow...over an hour ago.
For two summers, I would spend the 10PM hour playing out past New York Met seasons with my Strat-O-Matic baseball game. These were the versions of the popular strategy game that were not computerized. I'd follow the games of an earlier season schedule and simply replay the games. Then, I'd record the stats in a spiral bound notebook. The goal was to see if I could duplicate the same statistics that each player had actually recorded in that season. And was it possible for me to manage the New York Mets and improve their overall record?
I told you I was a weird kid. And obviously an only child.
I was only good for about two or three games a night. I had to set aside quality time for my next nightly activity.
Reading. And summer was the best time to do it.
I couldn't wait to hit a book around 11PM and go till about 1AM or whenever Dad popped home from work and sent me to bed. Even then, my reading preference tended to be more film and sports biographies. I would attack a novel from time to time. Usually, if some best seller was being made into a movie for summer release, I would race to finish the book before seeing the film. I remember vividly the breakneck speed at which I finished "The Godfather."
And, for this innocent youngster, Page 27 was more education than I ever needed.
But, the simple act of nightly reading was not the complete nirvana. I had another bizarre ritual that went along with it hand-in-hand.
I needed to have a glass of iced tea at my side. Usually the Nestea powder brand. Nobody in my house had the time or the inclination to brew it from scratch.
I'd then take the kitchen chair and put it as close to the monstrosity of a kitchen fan, which was always spinning on the highest speed. It was situated right next to a china closet, which created a pretty dark corner and a very small space. No worries. I was snug. And there is where my summer nightly reading took place. With a tensor lamp and me wedged in between the fan and the china closet with a good book. It was almost like my own private little cave.
To this day, the sound of an electric fan does a little more than just comfort me. It blows me right back to Don Corleone, Rhett and Scarlett, and a biography of Charlie Chaplin.
Before I knew it, I would be stirred back to reality by a male voice.
"Go to bed already."
Yes, Dad. My father would look at me in my odd nightly set-up and shake his head.
"Oh, it's too hot to even yell at you."
Dinner last night: Carlo's in Yonkers redeems itself with a great eggplant parm and a cannoli.
