Thursday, June 11, 2020

What goes around is useful

If you came up back in the stone age, as I did, generally "it was what it was". Cold, put on a sweater or two. Hot, take it off, including the shoes. Bored? Find a book or get up a ball game. I wonder if I even had the concept of "bored" as a state of being worthy of mention to my parents. We were so imbued with the concept of being children out of sight that I nearly died the time I felt something was not worth mentioning to my parents. So did my sister, here eating apples with neighborhood buddies.


By the time I had children, in the sixties, the little tikes were fomenting the concept of feelings and even rights. Now it was OK to say you were cold and be directed to the location of your sweater, or call out at midnight, "Mommy, I'm sick!", and vomit in the door way to the hall, not the bathroom toilet. My dad, my girls right and three more of his grands left.


The grands came along starting in the early nineties. Now an interesting dichotomy. I have six grandchildren, and was directly involved in twelve or thirteen years of half of them. Half were raised as were their parents, and half were raised by their parents. The finest example I have of that is the several yards of mulch my daughter had unloaded in her drive. To move it to designated areas she enlisted what else? Children.


Beth, my oldest, had watched the progress of Hamilton, Emily and Laura in turning over my front garden at the old house from a weed patch to a charming little English Cottage Garden. Laura was available the weekend of the mulch, and was enlisted to help. I guess she was eleven or twelve, so Caroline would have been tenish. Laura just kept shoveling and moving mulch; Caroline leaned on her shovel and complained it was too much work.



Beth called yesterday to tell me a story. She lives in an old house in one of the many ethnic enclaves in Cleveland. I've written of her wonderful, screened front porch and the Morris chairs for lying back and admiring the air and the view. She bought the house more than twenty five years ago, patching together grants for single working women with a credit union loan, and she was a homeowner!

She wanted to tell me the renovation of the old HVAC unit was complete. It had, of course, occurred over the hottest week days of the year to date. Cleveland was mid nineties much of last weekend and this week, until it broke overnight, for both of us. She is the only one out and about, going to work these last three months. Her husband, her son and her daughter each have assumed one floor to carry on, as students and as a banker. She was more than happy to daily escape.

The three left at home were equally happy, comfortable in the enclave each had carved out to carry on. Until the heat hit. Mom returned home Monday night to some hot, grumpy tenants. Tuesday was even worse. "I'm hot! I'm hotter! When will the A/C be on again? Mom, this is awful!"

"And you know what I told them? Hot is a state of mind!"

I hope you heard yourself saying that to a child of yours, back in the day we all lived in brand new developments, and were busy putting in grass and flower beds. No family on my street had air. It was why we went to the mall. Why, as kids, we went to the movies. Why my grandparents had a cottage on Lake Erie. Why I told my girls, "Hot is a state of mind."

Mom, Uncle Hank, friends at the cottage

Mom, Uncle Hank and friends at the Sheffield Lake cottage, July 4, 1932



47 comments:

  1. It is hard to imagine people grew up in Phoenix without air conditioning. They didnt know anything different.

    Betty

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  2. Smiling in recognition.
    We didn't have air conditioning as a child. Nor were we bored (which had an element of self preservation). Claiming boredom ensured that a task would be found for us.
    My wimpy adult self is glad to have a cooler these days, and still not bored.

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  3. I still don't have a/c, and I live where summer temps are often in the three-digit range. Evaporative cooler and fans to circulate cooler air. Still too hot? Go outside for a while and come back in. You get over it.

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  4. Beth obviously learned from a master.

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  5. Hari OM
    Heheh, yes, the words of the elders... personally, I am all in favour of aclimitisation. YAM xx

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  6. When the kids were moaning around here for no good reason that I could decipher, I always said "fix your problem". it worked! I assist when needed but for the most part they fix their problems quite well.If it is too hot, which is rare up here in the north, there is ice in the freezer and there is a freezer, large enough for a nap.As the climate changes though, and i hear of other parts of this nation in the over hundred's , I think that maybe the earth is trying to cook most of the population, If covid19 and the orange thing can not take us out, climate change will.

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  7. It must be gratifying to know that your words of wisdom are being handed down, LOL!

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  8. I loved this, but I love looking through others' family photos. I am going to look closer tomorrow.

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  9. One of the reasons I moved here was to escape the heat of Ontario, LOL I think and work and behave better in a more temperate climate. Heat eats my braincells.
    I've never been bored in my life and trained my kids never to utter the words or they never would again with all the stuff I'd pile on them.

    XO
    WWW

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  10. It's great isn't it when you hear your own words coming out of your children's mouth :)

    'Hot is a state of mind' oh yeah ......even the shade is hot here some days in the summer!
    Yes the shopping centre, cinema, library are places of refuge but these days, some days my lounge room with cooling on is even better

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  11. Great photos and the memories of those times. Hot is a state of mind! Ha! In midwest summers, Mom sent us to lie under shade trees. We survived it year after year. As grownups we discovered A/C was heaven sent.

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  12. I often catch myself speaking and sounding like my mother. My husband and daughter always respond, “Yes, Mary,” my mother’s name. There’s a lot worse I could be called so I smile.

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  13. We didn't have much for toys. The farmyard was our playground and it was awesome. In fact, we roamed the whole farm for our playground. We were never bored.

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  14. If I ever told my mother I was bored she immediately said she had any number of things I could do for her....I feel so fortunate to have grown up in a time with so much freedom and a place with fields and forests nearby.

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  15. I love this post. I love the photos, the memories, all of it. I don't think I have ever been bored in my life unless I was waiting for an appointment without something to read or maybe standing in line somewhere. I also learned early in life that children were seen and not heard and if I ever said I was bored I would be given work to do!

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  16. I only remember being "hot" a few times... that is until we moved to Missouri. But we had air conditioning for the first time in our lives! Ahhhh!

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  17. I still don't have air conditioning. Our old double brick house stays pretty cool on the main floor and we have ceiling fans in the bedrooms. Open up two windows and you get a cross-breeze. Do NOT get me started on "boredom" and the need for instant gratification. I love how they are dressed in the photo at the lake cottage! -Jenn

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    1. I'm fairly confident "the girls" made their clothes, and I love Uncle Hank's white shirt and tie.

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  18. I remember growing up in a mid-north town in my state where temperatures were often over 100 from early summer until mid autumn and not once did I feel the heat since I was so used to it. Now that I'm older and have lived in cooler places I feel it so much more and maybe it is just a state of mind, but my body refuses to listen when I think icy thoughts.

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  19. Being hot in the summer was what it was when we grew up. It was the norm and finding ways to keep cool gave us something to do. We had no choice. Today A/C is the norm for many people in hot places and they have adjusted to it. I know that I would have missed mine this past weekend as my health relies on it. There is also no place to go now as even if stores and movies were open, they are too dangerous to enter. That is our new norm.

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  20. Here in the UK houses don't have a/c because most of the time we don't need it. But I couldn't cope without it in our house in AZ!

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  21. We do tend to become our parents.

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  22. Great piece, Joanne, containing so many truisms. I think some kids today are born with a sense of entitlement!

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  23. I love those pictures! All of them!
    We didn't have AC when I was a child either and I can remember not being able to sleep because it was so hot. But that's the way it was. I don't think we were necessarily tougher then- we just had no choice.
    And dear god- I hope I've not become my mother. That's all I need to say about that.

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    1. No, but it's OK for your children to become you.

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  24. Love that 1932 photo - the dresses are fabulous! How dressed up they always were - not ragged tshirts and cutoffs like I might wear even now that I am old! Sweet family history!

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  25. You're right about a time when kids weren't bored, and weren't allowed to be be bored. If I ever said I was bored, my mum would say "Well, find something to do then." And I always did. People who constantly complain they're bored simply don't have enough imagination - or aren't using it.

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  26. There is an English comedian called Jenny Eclair who is capable of some very witty insights. One is that the trouble with children now is that they need to spend their summer holidays just sitting on a wall, preferably in the North of England.

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  27. We used to find a nice shade tree to stay under as much as possible. We could play or quietly read depending on the mood. I do like air conditioning.

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  28. I love the pictures, Joanne!

    I can remember it being hot when I was a child, but the average temperature and duration of "hot" has risen since then, and I don't just get hot, I get ill. Air conditioning in the worst of the summer heat and humidity is as much a necessity to me as heat in the wintertime. Our climate is changing.

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  29. I decided one time when I was 12 maybe that I was going to climb up to the railroad tracks from the trestle bridge over the bayou. I got about ⅔ of the way up and the next level of cross beams and diagonals were higher than I could reach and so I found myself stuck up there because climbing up was doable but looking down climbing down looked impossible. I was alone and no one knew where I was. I figured I would die clinging to the trestle or die when I fell. I don't know how long I sat up there until I pulled up my big girl panties and attempted the climb down. obviously I made it and I never told my parents.

    when I was growing up we had a swamp cooler and an attic fan. then one night when I was about 5 (?) the attic fan shorted out and caught on fire. then we got some window units which didn't do much better than the swamp cooler and attic fan.

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    1. My mother was in her seventies, like I am, when I shared those sort of adventures with her. One night we sat and swapped story for story. I wonder how many stories there are, among all of us out there.

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  30. I don't have a.c., but am thinking of getting a fan.

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  31. I open my windows in summer and have a fire in winter, air conditioning is something I worked in for years many headaches and sinus later I'm now happy with fresh air.
    Merle............

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  32. I loved the story and the photos, Joanne. Hope they got the A/C back up and running. One of the hottest times in my life was when we were in the middle of Nevada traveling to Las Vegas in the summer and the A/C died in the car.

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  33. Yes children are so different in todays world. I wouldn't have said a word to visitors unless spoken to, while my grand children never stop But all very interesting they can talk about matters of State, where as I at their age knew nothing!

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  34. When we moved from Ohio to Maryland in the 1960's, we couldn't believe how hot and humid MD was. We were grateful to have an A/C in our new Levitt house. Our windows (we're still in the same house) are open today because it's in the 70's, a welcome reprieve from the usual heat and humidity.

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  35. A ha! I do like familial retrospectives. Going back to the past these days satisfies me the most. Perhaps because we live in such divided and even frightening times these days. But it must be said between the racism and pandemic and the poor leadership in the White House escaping to the past feels much better.

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  36. These are so interesting photos and tales, thank you!
    The "hot" part reminds me of the movie The seven-year itch - where it is so hot in NY that the families leave NY (and Marilyn puts her pyjamas into the fridge :-)

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  37. Hot? In summer, every other sentence that came out of mouth was about heat and being intolerant.

    Love your photos.

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  38. Your daughter's porch is lovely. A screen porch is such a treasure to have. As for air conditioning, it is a state of mind until about 60 years old.

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  39. Joanne, that first picture of you is adorable.

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    1. Thank you, and that is my sister Janice on the left and her friends.

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  40. I like all the pictures. Glad you are here.

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  41. I was raised in the 60s. I always think of it as the era of benign neglect. As long as you were quiet, not in the way and home for dinner, you were free to conduct your business as you saw fit. You can't raise kids like that anymore even if you want to, at least in an urban setting. Societal expectations for parent involvement are very different now.

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  42. It seems many children these days can't use their imagination - too bad. I remember as a child playing with a friend on a seesaw imagining we were in a rocket ship and describing all the things we saw! I also remember telling my own children once, when the ac broke down, get a damp towel and wear it as a cape and stand under the ceiling fan!

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