Road Apples by Tim Sanders
July 19, 2010

Hot enough for you? If not, head north

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In case you haven’t noticed (due to the fact that you are comatose, or perhaps your wife hid your special aluminum foil, Alien Mind Control-Repellent hat and you’re afraid to leave home without it) it’s been very hot over the past few weeks here in Alabama. This may just be a normal periodic heat wave, or it may indeed be due to man made global warming, as promoted by renowned Nobel laureate, Academy Award winner, Internet inventor, Heisman Trophy recipient, Dancing With The Stars semi-finalist, and celebrated Sex Poodle Al Gore. I’m no scientist, so this is yet another area in which I must plead ignorance.

Which is not to say that I don’t know anything at all. I do. I am originally from Michigan, and what I know is this: You have never endured an incredibly hot summer until you’ve endured a Michigan summer. Hot Michigan summer, you say? Yes, I reply, I said hot Michigan summer. When I was a kid, we had plenty of them.

 
As I remember it, in Michigan, most of the year was wintertime, which was punctuated on one end by a few hours of autumn, and on the other by a few hours of springtime. Michigan summertime officially began on July 31, and lasted, weather permitting, all the way through August 3. Okay, so I may be exaggerating just a little, but I exaggerate to make a point. My point is, just because summers were short in Michigan, that does not mean they weren’t hot. They were.

Of course, given the fact that each year provided us with nearly 11 months of winter, we always looked forward to summer. In fact, the oppressive heat was a welcome contrast. It was a chance for rural Michigan kids to pretend we were cosmopolitan Californians by frolicking in the warm sunlight until our sickly, pale, Midwestern skin was transformed into sickly, fire engine red Midwestern skin, which we thought was extremely cool. I have a photo of myself holding a blind largemouth bass which I caught one sunny afternoon on a northern Michigan lake. I did not resemble that cool, tanned surfer dude James Darren at all. I looked like a red Tootsie Roll Pop with ears, stuffed into a pair of what we used to call clam diggers.

Each summer Middleville’s little school system would provide a bus or two to take local kids to one of our neighboring lakes to go swimming. In Barry County, we had a whole lot of lakes, but the lakes of choice were Gun Lake and Green Lake, both of which had public beaches, relatively clear, unmuddied water, and that most important lake feature, a raft. The rafts were always anchored in 10 or 12 feet of water, to ensure safe diving. The adults who accompanied us provided us with valuable safety information based on years of swimming and water sports experience, which amounted to: “Never go into the water until at least an hour after eating, or you will get a cramp and sink like a stone. And GARY, QUIT HOLDING MARVIN’S HEAD UNDER WATER!” Nobody ever drowned, so I guess those instructions were sufficient.

In those days nobody in Michigan except for politicians, and other lunatics with lots of money to waste, had air conditioning. To be perfectly honest, nobody saw any need for it. On those few days when it was unbearably hot, Dad always assembled his cast iron, industrial oscillating electric pedestal fan. This monstrosity was about six-and-a-half feet tall (the fan, not Dad), and the blades were steel. Dad said it was originally used in an aircraft factory during WWII, but I always thought, from the looks of the thing, that it must have been from the Spanish-American War era. The blades were the size of canoe paddles, and the fan motor had one speed, which was much faster than necessary, and made the fan thump and vibrate like a helicopter rotor. It did, however, move a lot of warm air through the house, and was perfectly safe, as long as you didn’t get within ten feet of it. Dad always set the fan in the hallway so that it would draw air in through the screen door. Mom was careful to move any fragile knickknacks from shelves in or near the line of fire whenever the fan was in use.

Back then, few automobiles had air conditioners. What we had, for those youngsters out there who’ve never ridden in a car with chrome bumpers and tail fins, were state-of-the-art innovations called vent windows. Ask your grandparents about them. They could produce wind throughout the car in several directions as you sped down the road. By which I mean the vent windows, not your grandparents.

But that was then, you say, and this isn’t. Even people in Michigan have air conditioners nowadays, so why would anyone in his right mind complain about a few hot summer days in Michigan? Let me explain.

A few summers ago Marilyn and I visited with some of my relatives in southwestern Michigan. We were there for a couple of weeks, and had a swell time, except for the heat. Oh sure, they have air conditioners in Michigan now, but due to years and years of sun deprivation, they look forward to warmth, inside the house and outside the house. Lots of it. I firmly believe that if the earth were to break loose from its orbit and hurtle toward the sun at warp speed, most Michiganders would not turn on their air conditioners until their roofs caught fire. And yes, their cars have air conditioners, too. But from my experience on a leisurely drive from the town of Newaygo to Greenville, some thirty miles away, in 90-degree weather, with sweat oozing from my every pore, my brother Dick thought the air conditioner in his Buick was never to be used north of the Mason-Dixon line.

If you plan to visit Michigan this August, I guarantee you’ll be ready to head home to Alabama within a week, just to cool off. We have air conditioners down here, and we know how to use ‘em.