“Those girls don’t dare cry or utter a cross word or they get a bath,” my grandmother observed one July day.
It was the summer of 1940 and Mother did everything she could think of to keep the house cool and, consequently, its occupants. Houses were not air-conditioned then; the coolest buildings in town were the drugstores, theaters, locker plant and the ice house where great blocks of ice were manufactured for those who still relied on ice-boxes to keep their perishable foods safe and for people making homemade ice cream, or for chilling watermelons or cold drinks for picnics and parties. Most people had gas or electric refrigerators by then, but freezing compartments were tiny (most holding only two small ice cube trays) and iced drinks and frozen desserts were a summertime luxury.
Water was Mother’s favorite weapon when it came to combating summer heatwaves. The garden hose was in frequent use on summer days. On hot mornings, she set a washtub where it would be in the shade by the garage and filled it with water for cooling activities during sweltering afternoons. My sisters and I often splashed each other by scooping water from the tub with our hands or initiated serious water fights with tin cans or sandbox pails for more serious soakings. Sometimes we simply climbed into the washtub, clothes and all, and soaked away the discomfort of ninety-degree afternoons. On deadly hot days when Mother decreed it too hot for us to play outdoors, we would spend afternoons alternately taking cool baths in the big porcelain bathtub and lying, clad only in underpants, on a sheet spread over the scratchy living-room carpet, reading, playing with paper dolls, jigsaw puzzles or coloring books. There were two oscillating fans (with rubber blades for safety) placed on the floor nearby to sweep us with cooling blasts of air as they turned endlessly back and forth.
Mother kept the blazing afternoon sunshine at bay with dark shades over the windows and outside awnings that shaded the windows on the sunny side of the house. After supper when the air began to cool and the sun no longer beat down on the south and west walls, she kicked off her shoes and turned on the garden hose to wash and cool the outside of the house, the steps, porch and sidewalk that had stored heat from the sun all day. She watered all the flowers and grass around the kitchen door and sprinkled anybody who dared to venture near.
On days that were tolerably cooler, we played outdoors in the shade of four huge elm trees that sheltered the west side of the house and the screened front porch where we slept all summer. Sometimes we would each be given a nickel and sent off to the locker plant, just a few blocks away, to buy ice cream cones, Popsicles or frozen DIP candy bars. Usually barefoot, as we were most summers when we were children, we tip-toed over the hot strips of sidewalk where the sun had heated the concrete. Inside the coolness of the locker plant’s sales room, we lingered, enjoying the relief from the heat and dreading the contrasting blast we knew would assail us when we returned to the outdoors.
When footgear was positively necessary, we wore sandals made up of as few straps as needed to keep them on our feet. We called them “barefoot sandals” to distinguish them from other summer shoes such as the more exotic woven sandals from Mexico that vacationing friends brought back as gifts and souvenirs (today’s inexpensive thong sandals hadn’t yet appeared in our world.)
No matter what errands or play we had been occupied with, if we were hot and sweaty, there was always the bathtub filled with tepid water to cool us off. We played with soap bubble pipes and tiny paper boats we made by folding small sheets of pastel paper from a scratch pad – or created fantastic “hair-dos” by sculpting our shampoo-stiffened hair into exotic swirls and waves. The tub was wide and deep, with plenty of room for three little girls to pretend to be glamorous movie stars or mermaids. I guess you might say that we were “cool” in both senses of the word.