I was born in the year 8 BAC: 8 years before we had a window unit air
conditioner in our home—a window unit in my parents’ bedroom. We lived in Southeast Texas, near the Gulf of
Mexico where hot and humid summers lingered into early October. So how did we manage before the advent of
cool air?
One of my earliest memories is a summer day in our kitchen, with
a light breeze wafting in through the screen door. I watched Mary do the ironing while I made
little animals from scraps of pie crust dough.
We listened to her “story” on the radio as she sprinkled the laundry
with a Coke bottle fitted with a cork stopper with a perforated metal top, then
rolled everything up to chill in the refrigerator before pressing. Mary kept water in a Mason jar in the small freezer
compartment. Periodically she would take
the jar out, punch a hole in the thin layer of ice, and sip the cool water.
Summer mornings, for us children, involved many hours in the
swimming pool at the country club. Our
mothers in their shirtwaist dresses would smoke cigarettes and watch us from Adirondack
chairs in the shade of the pecan trees. My
sister and I played at being mermaids, and using the steps leading into the
shallow end as our castle. Mid-day hours
were mostly spent inside at home to avoid the scorching sun. Even my father, who left home shortly after
dawn each morning to make house calls, would return home for a lunch and a post-prandial
nap. My brother and I ventured out one day to see if we could really fry an egg
on the side walk. Not only did succeed
at this, we were also able to cook a slice of bacon on the ashphalt road. There is a good reason for siestas in warmer
climes.
Nights could be very oppressive. Even though the
temperature would drop 10 degrees or so, when we lay in bed, waiting to go to sleep, there was not much to distract
attention from the heat and humidity. We
had a huge fan that sucked air into the attic through a large grate in the
ceiling of the hall, pulling air into the house through the windows. And there was an oscillating fan in the
bedroom I shared with my sister, rotating to blow alternately on me and then
her, cooling us by evaporating the sweat that collected in the thin bedsheets. So relief from came in waves, until we
drifted into the oblivion of sleep.
The best way to beat the heat was to go to the movies, the
only air conditioned space in town. A
large Penguin decal on the glass entry door proclaimed “It’s Kool Inside,” Kool
being a brand of mentholated cigarettes.
The theater had originally been a vaudeville venue. There was a stage in front of the screen and
thick velvet curtains that would open at the beginning of the show. The walls were elaborately decorated with
something that I imagined to be seaweed, pretending that we were all under the
ocean. There was a glassed in, sound
proofed “cry room,” in the back of the theater, where mothers could sit with
their babies. And there was this
mysterious balcony.
I wanted to sit in the balcony, and searched for stairs that
would take me there. Eventually my
mother told me we weren’t allowed, because that was the colored section. I asked, “What color is it?” She told me that it was the place where
colored people sat. Colored people were
the ones that looked like Mary. She
showed me the door outside, just to the right of the ticket booth, that was
labeled “Colored Entrance.” I felt
indignant that those people had the privilege of sitting in the mysterious
balcony, while we were restricted to the boring main floor. The extent of that ignorance and naiveté
still shames me today.
We often met my Dad for dinner at the Country Club, hamburgers or
steaks on the terrace. Eventually I
realized that the only colored people I saw at the country club were the ones
that cooked, cleaned, and waited on us.
My favorite was Maddie, the cook and bartender who made chocolate pie
with the most incredibly thick meringue.
She had a secret pact with my mother.
Maddie would monitor the slot machine and let my mother know when it was
about to pay off. I believe they split
the winnings pretty evenly. The country
club was definitely the place to be in summer.
Except for the polio year. But
that is another story.
