If You Think This is Hot
Thinking back on some hot locations that I had to endure, I thought I’d share them now that summer has arrived with 80 plus degree Fahrenheit and high humidity weather. There were hot summer days in my childhood that seem to blur together and nothing specific stands out. When those days happened, I’d slip away with friends and go swimming at White Bridge, or to swimming holes near Indian Head or Sagamore, or walk to the closest creek to home. It was usually the coldest, beneath the bridge on Route 381 near Poplar Run Road.
While I worked at Walworth Valve Company before I entered the Navy, I worked with the welders hauling supplies and still hot metal valves on a hand-truck. It was hot work too. I rode to work with several others. We’d meet at Red Alison’s tire shop where he retreaded tires. The heat was welcome in the winter, but not in the summer.
The next hot situation occurred when I was discharged from the Navy. I had been stationed in Keflavik, Iceland and was transferred to Philadelphia Naval Station in August. The heat and humidity in the barracks without air conditioning was nearly unbearable. I would lie on my bunk and pray for a stray breeze to slip through the open windows.
Another uncomfortable meeting with extreme heat and humidity happened in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. I was one of the chaperones taking church kids to the Bill Rice Ranch for summer camp. The chaperones slept in the same dorm bunks as the kids…and they weren’t air conditioned either. We suffered through one night before jumping into the vans and heading to K-mart where we bought a small box fan and hung them to the top frame to blow cooling air current all night long. Those kids were jealous, but the dorms there are now air conditioned. There is little worse that the summer heat and humidity in Tennessee.
When my son Andrew Beck married Renee Largent in Cottonwood, Arizona, their wedding was in August. I had to fly into the airport in Phoenix, Arizona before renting a car and driving north to Cottonwood. I’ve heard people say, “The heat in Arizona is a dry heat,” but when the temperature is over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, hot is hot. When I walked out of the airport the heat bouncing off the concrete was like walking into a blast furnace.
A remarkable thing about Phoenix is that it’s located in a basin. I think it functions as a parabola and intensifies the heat. Leaving Phoenix, there is a warning sign not to use the air conditioning as you drive out and up the slope.