After the last heat wave broke and we had several days of pleasant weather, I was certain the hot summer days were behind us for this year. I was wrong. The last few days have been even hotter. Manhattan, Kansas, had the nation’s high, 114 degrees on Saturday. Had I been attending school there, I would have wanted to visit the state park located below the dam, When I was a KSU student we called it Tuttle Puddle and it was high on the students lists of favorite summertime places. However, this year the park is closed because of blue-green algae.

So thankful to work in a building that is at least partially air conditioned. We have places in the newspaper complex that aren’t, but most of the time I work where it is air conditioned.

When the crew is here, we utilize ceiling fans which help circulate the cool air and make my office more pleasant.

I was given a portable fan that is supposed to run off of batteries or a USB power supply. I tried it for the first time on the weekend and thought it was great but after less than two days of use, it appears to have died. I suspect it didn’t cost much but whatever it was it too much for it didn’t last long.

When I helped my father at the gasoline station, we didn’t have any air conditioning but we did eventually have a couple of fans. When a public auction closed out the Formoso barber shop, Dad bought an old ceiling fan. It wasn’t working but he determined that was because of the switch. He wired around the switch and we had a single speed fan.

It was so nice he got another old fan for the garage in which we sold fireworks. The fan had been located in the Shaw-Baird-Stubbs insurance office located where Horizon bank is now. One year the fan met up with a broom handle and two of the four blades were sheared off. Dad assumed the fan would never run again but I discovered it and the one from Formoso had been made by a company with headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri. I didn’t have part numbers, but I had model numbers and St. Louis as the manufacturer’s home. I wrote a letter with just the St. Louis address. It was delivered and in a few days I had the needed parts to put both fans back into operation. Today, I suspect the post office would refuse to deliver the letter without a more complete address.

On a hot summer day, I liked to refill the soda pop cooler. Our first cooler was a chest-type unit that circulated chilled water. While restocking, I liked to stick my hands into the cold water.

Evenings many Superior residents drove out onto the hill to buy a little gasoline and escape the heat of town. Some customers drove out just for ice cream or a bottle of soda pop. The station had a freezer stocked with ice cream and fudge bars, along with cones and sandwiches. The bars were a nickel and the cones and sandwiches 10 cents. Instead of ice cream cups we stocked pints which the working men liked on hot summer afternoons.

Dad considered adding a soft-serve ice cream shack to the station but was concerned the need for water and sewer services might cause a problem.

I was excited when the neighbors built ponds within walking distance of the station for I thought they would make private swimming pools. I tried them a few times but they had what I considered nasty moss growing along the edge which kept me from just sitting or laying in the water.

I dreamed about someday having a private swimming pool but that dream remains unfulfilled.

While I may have said I was going swimming, I didn’t want to work that hard on a hot summer day. I found riding my horse down to the river and laying in the shallows and feeling the movement of the sand and water was more to my liking.

———————

Monday a social media site maintained by the Superior Public Schools invited the submission of first day of school photos. I suspect the person who maintains the site expected photos would be submitted by parents of current children attending the schools. But since the site didn’t state any submission standards, I thought about sharing one or more of my photos. My parents took a back-to-school photo every year from first grade through the start of college. It is now fun to look at the photos and note the changes. Most of the grade school photos show me with a horse. The high school photos are taken with a motor vehicle in the background.

I enjoyed looking at the photos and thought about how times have changed. Not a single photo posted on the school site shows a student with the horse they rode to school.

From 1st through 12th grade, my mother insisted I go the first day wearing brand new jeans and a new shirt. When doing the wash, my mother always starched both my shirts and jeans. The jeans were dried on pant’s stretchers so they would have a crease down the center of the leg.

I wanted the narrow leg western cut jeans but my mother insisted I wear the fuller leg that could be stretched.

When I left for college, I left my jeans at home for I thought college students should only wear “dress pants.” As a college student, I soon concluded I got better grades if my attire also include a neck tie. Had I been a veterinarian medicine student, the neck tie would have been required.

Had students in my day gone to class wearing what some of today’s students wore for opening day, they would have been sent home to change clothes.

Now the Superior schools are air conditioned. In my day, I don’t remember a Superior classroom with a fan. While attending college, I only remember two of the newer buildings in which I attended class being air conditioned.. Thankfully, the new dorm I stayed in was air conditioned. The older dorms were not.

As it was a major task to convert between heating and air conditioning, there were always a few days when we either roasted or froze. I remember nights when we left our room lights on all night hoping the incandescent bulbs would add some heat to the room. And there were nights when we opened the windows and our hall doors hoping for a cooling draft. The open policy occasionally led to unwelcome visitors.