The Good Ol' Summertime

I now live in Palm Springs, California and every day, the temperature climbs above 100 degrees during the summer.   Temperatures on a normal day between June and September can be 100 to 120 degrees.  When the winds blow, there are often sand storms that create drifts of sand along our streets.  Sometimes, the streets are even closed if the winds get to high.    We normally get about 3" of rain every year and when we do get a thunderstorm, which is fairly uncommon, lightening strikes dry vegetation hanging from palm trees and sets them on fire.   It is a very strange site to see five or six or seven palm trees burning during a thunderstorm!

This is a view of the pool at our complex.    You can see the tall palms in the background.   Sun warms the pool water to about 90-95 degrees in the summer months and electric heat keeps it at 85-90 during the rest of the year.   You expect heat in the desert and that's why most of us live here.  From October through May, the weather is very pleasant.   Daytime highs are normally 70-80 degrees while the evenings cool off into the 50s and 60s.    We seldom have any humidity in the air in Palm Springs, unless we are having a rare flow inland from the Pacific Ocean, which may result in a little drizzle.   Fortunately, there is a huge underground aquifer underneath Palm Springs.   Our Cochella Valley has about 500,000 residents and scientists tell us that we have enough water for 300 years, even with projected growth in population.   Otherwise, the 93 golf courses would be in trouble!

I dare say we could not live without air conditioning.   I was reminded of that yesterday when mine failed.   The temperature in the apartment quickly climbed until it was oppressive.  Luckily it has been restored and it is comfortable again today.

I spent the first thirty years of my life in Wabaunsee County, Kansas.    My family did not have air conditioning when I was growing up.   During June, July, August and early September, the temperatures would often be in the mid to upper 90s and sometimes even top 100 degrees.    In Kansas, we could usually count on very high humidity and wind.   There weren't many times when the air was dry and there was no breeze.   Today everyone has air conditioning and we would suffer greatly without it.

I wasn't born until 1944 and I don't remember having any stretches of intolerably hot weather as my parents and grandparents endured during the 1930s.   This is a quote from the National Weather Service Website:  "Nearly every year in the 1930s was below normal on rainfall, especially during the growing season. Combined with record-setting heat, this produced what is known as the "Dust Bowl Days." Numerous high temperature records, many of which still stand, were set in the mid-1930s. The highest temperature ever recorded in Topeka of 114 degrees occurred on July 24, 1936. Also during that year, the maximum number of 100 degree or greater days, 59, also occurred. The drought and extreme unrelenting heat took its toll on both humans and animals."

My home community, Maple Hill, Kansas, was just 25 miles west of Topeka, so it's easy to see that they suffered mightily from the heat and drought.   I never remember a time when our family didn't have electric fans to help cool us.   But I remember all of my maternal grandparents, Robert and Mildred (McCauley) Corbin and my parents, John L. "Tim" and Lucille (Corbin) Clark, and many of my aunts and uncles and others talking about how torturous it was to live through those times.

This 1935 photograph shows a dust storm approaching.   I don't think Maple Hill ever had anything this severe, but I remember my grandparents and mother talking about having dust so bad that they had to wet sheets and hang them over windows to prevent the dust from coming into the house.   There were many cases of death and illness related to dust storms.   One could get "dust pneumonia" from breathing too much dirt into your lungs.   The temperatures were so hot that it was impossible to close windows and the wind blew so hard that the dust found its way into homes through the smallest cracks in siding and around windows and doors.   There was no way to escape it.

My paternal grandparents, James P. and Mable R. (Jones) Clark, had a big Emerson Electric Fan with a black cast iron body and brass blades.   I remember it well because my grandmother was still using it well into the 1950s.   I wish I knew where it was today because I'll bet it is still working.   They got it in the late 1920s.   My grandmother was the chief operator at the Maple Hill Central Office (telephone exchange) and the United Telephone Company bought the fan to keep the business off cool.   Operators had to sit at the switchboard and needed air movement.   Electric fans were not common in rural homes until the 1940s.

During the 1930s, my mother, Lucille (Corbin) Clark, was a teenager.   She remembered well how the heat and dust affected her family's life.   She said that it would be stiflingly hot in any upstairs, especially if there was not breeze.   Her mother and maternal grandmother, Lucy Mae (Lemon) McCauley-Banta-Strong made comforters during the winter.   They would take wool fabric, place old clothing or batting in between the layers of fabric, and then take yarn and tie the two pieces together making knots every six or eight inches.    These were taken outside onto porches or just laid on the ground and used for "pallets."    Adults and children slept outside under the stars to keep cool.   They really thought nothing of it because everyone was doing the same thing.

Ice was at a premium during that time.   Few people had refrigerators because few people in rural areas had electricity until the Rural Electrification Administration Act of 1935 began to bring electricity to the farms of America.   Most farms had electricity by the end of World War II in 1946.   I checked the "Maple Hill News Items" and found that the reporter had noted on June 30, 1922 that "Maple Hill is really enjoying our new electric lights."   So houses in town had electric power much earlier than in the country.

Moundview Farm, built by Sen. W. W. Cocks three miles west of Maple Hill, Kansas.  The acetylene gas tank was in the basement of the house.

Before that, most of the houses were lighted with kerosene lamps, with acetylene gas lamps and Rayo lamps using gasoline under pressure.   The old stone house we lived in three miles west of Maple Hill, had been built in 1893 by Sen. W. W. Cocks of Long Island, New York.   It was equipped from the beginning with acetylene gas lamps and the fixtures were still on every wall when we moved into the home in 1973.  There was usually a tank located in the basement where chemicals were combined to "make" acetylene gas.   These could be quite dangerous and could explode and cause many problems.

One way people and children kept cool was by going to the ol' swimming hole.   Mill Creek was located about 1.5 miles south of Maple Hill, and unless it was not running because of drought, provided some relief.    I can remember going to the big, deep "hole" located under the Highway 30 bridge over Mill Creek and going swimming a few times with friends.   My father, John L. "Tim" Clark and his friends used to go often and in addition to swimming, my father developed a real fondness for what he called "hand fishing."   He would swim under water and feel along the banks for holes or dens where big catfish lived.   He would come up for air, go down again, and catch them by the gills and pull them out of their holes.   Some of these fish could be 30 or 40 pounds and not easily landed, but Dad seemed to know how to do it.    Of course, this kind of fishing later became illegal and he quit doing it.  

The riffles just to the east of the deep hole under the Mill Creek highway bridge were also a good place to play and splash.   In my lifetime, I'm quite sure no one was baptized in those riffles, but within the last ten years, Rev. Andrew McHenry baptized many of the congregation there.    About the first or second time I went swimming in the Mill Creek hole, a great big water snake joined me and that was enough to scare me away from the creek.   We didn't have any poisonous water snakes in eastern Kansas, but I really didn't care.   They were big and looked ominous and I didn't want to share my swimming with them.

Writing about Mill Creek and being in the water, reminded me of how my father and his father, James P. Clark, used to break their horses.   Both were considered very good horsemen and my grandfather bought and sold horses for many decades.    Dad always said it was the "Indian" way of breaking the horse.   He would lead the unbroken horse into Mill Creek, and after it was swimming he would get on its back and just swim the horse and swim it until it was exhausted.   Then he would remain on the horse's back and walk it out of the creek.   He would stay on and continue to ride the horse bare back until the horse was used to him and most of the time the horse would never buck.   Then he'd get the horse used to having the saddle on its back and to having the since cords under it's stomach and walla---within a week the horse would be gentle and accept the saddle and rider without any resistance.

Water snakes were scary critters but not poisonous.    I think I've prattled on for enough today.       Hope you're having a good day and not suffering from heat!    Happy Trails!