(Originally published in 2009. Hey, I’m only plagiarizing myself.)
When I was a kid we didn’t have air conditioning, just a swamp cooler. On really hot days I just laid on the cold tile floor under that fan and panted like my dog, Rusty. I always figured that’s where the term “dog days of summer” came from: dogs that just lie around and pant in the heat.
As much sense as that might make, I looked it up and here’s the deal:
The Ancient Romans called it caniculares dies (days of the dogs.) It arose from the notion that Sirius, the dog star, was angry this time of year and caused the Earth to get very hot. To appease the star’s rage the Romans sacrificed a brown dog at the beginning of Dog Days.
No, I don’t know why it had to be a brown dog.
The Romans, of course, thought nothing of committing carnage upon any creature that moved if it might be even remotely possible that a good screeching, bloody sacrifice would serve some useful or noble purpose.
This is why the Ancient Greeks were considered the brains of the outfit.
It’s raining today in North Texas. I love rain and dark, cloudy days.
Me slurping from our garden hose on a hot day.
Most people I know worship the sun. They seem to like summer best of all and the hotter it gets the better. I don’t get it. I really dislike heat.
Summer was great in the 1950s when I was a kid, impervious to sweat and grime, running barefoot through neighborhood lawn sprinklers and slurping from any old hose lying around because that’s what they were for.
We didn’t have air conditioning when I was a kid. We had a swamp cooler on the roof that blasted semi-cool, very humid air through a hole in the ceiling directly into the middle of the hallway between the living room and kitchen in our house. I used to lay my bare tummy on chilly asbestos floor tiles right under the torrent of wind wearing nothing but a pair of shorts fashioned by my mother’s scissors applied to an old set of blue jeans.
A new picture of an old wooden clothes rack like the one we had in the hallway.
I stayed there for hours on the hall floor with a stack of Dennis the Menace and Sad Sack comic books for entertainment.
Sometimes I took the pillow from my bed and put it on the floor next to my comic books. That was “the life of Riley”, as we called it in those days.
Mom had to step over me to hang wet laundry on the wooden clothes rack. She didn’t mind. Sometimes she gave me lunch there, peanut butter and grape jelly on white Wonder Bread. I had to eat it fast so it didn’t get stale from the wind.
Me with my sister, Linda, and our faithful collie, Rusty.
I wish I had pictures of all these things: me, my pillow, PBJ and comics. Sometimes my collie, Rusty, would lie down with me for a couple of minutes. He liked the cool floor but I don’t think he cared for the overhead wind. He’d soon get up and wander, panting, to his water bucket.
For the past fifty or more years I’ve been able to enjoy and expect indoor air conditioning.
Now in my mid-sixties I don’t need to strip down to my shorts and lie on the floor under a swamp cooler.
That’s progress.
I still like summer for its memories of all-day baseball, ice cream trucks, Wham-O™ Slip ‘n Slides and hot days that wouldn’t end until bed time. I loved childhood.
These days I prefer old man comforts, winter and the temperate yet crazy weather days of spring and fall in Texas.
Dark skies and rain feel cozy to me. They call people like me pluviophiles.
I’m glad they have a name for it. I just thought I was weird.
When I was a kid we didn’t have air conditioning, just a swamp cooler. On really hot days I just laid on the cold tile floor under that fan and panted like my dog, Rusty. I always figured that’s where the term “dog days of summer” came from: dogs that just lie around and pant in the heat.
