It was so hot even the lizards were licking ice cubes.
That was the day this week that a weather web site said the “real feel” was 120 degrees.
Yes, that’s what it said. Please do not adjust your sets.
People were praying for an eclipse of the sun.
They were chasing ice cream trucks like mixed-breed dogs.
They were smashing blue raspberry sno-cones on their heads.
They stayed inside, adjusting the air conditioners that opened the Lowcountry to all this development. Without air conditioners, we’d have the place to ourselves.
I grew up in a day when air conditioning was not so rampant.
Women went to town with umbrellas to shield themselves from the wilting sun.
Kids squirted each other with a garden hose.
In big cities, firefighters unleashed mighty blasts of water from fire hydrants as hundreds of kids ran wild in the big spray.
In Beaufort, they built their houses at the correct angle to best catch the breezes off the river.
On Hilton Head Island, they rested in the shade of mighty oaks in the middle of the day, and maybe uprooted some of the buried ice.
The county courthouse would shut down in the dog days. It probably helped that the judge had to wear a black robe.
People wore straw hats with wide brims.
There were more seersucker suits at church than Bibles. And still the preacher wasn’t the only one mopping his brow.
Cars may not have had air conditioning, but they had front window vents. These vents could be turned just right to create a blast of wind it would turn your lips inside out.
People had church fans and funeral home fans. They had giant straw hand fans. They had folding fans. And window fans and ceiling fans and attic fans and oscillating fans and pedestal fans.
People of the Lowcountry went to the river, and they went in the river and down the river. They went to the sand bar and the oceanfront — and they still do.
In rural Georgia, we had to settle for the outdoor baptismal pool at Ways Baptist Church. But we knew its cold, spring-fed waters to be as miraculous as Moses.
My granddaddy would take a break from the garden to sit on an overturned bucket in the shade by the smoke house. He would let the sweat drip off his nose, roll a Prince Albert cigarette, and sip cold Coca-Cola from a 6.5-ounce bottle.
People didn’t expect air conditioning. They knew it would feel like 120 degrees in August, when the cotton was high, the lizards were lazy, and the rich folk had motored off the mountains.
And they just made do.
David Lauderdale: 843-706-8115, @ThatsLauderdale
This story was originally published August 17, 2017 11:59 AM.