Time Spent Making Art: THE LONG HOT SUMMERS...OF LONG, LONG AGO.

Still Waters. (Loon) Intaglio Print

Written on July 19, 2019

These past few days we’ve experienced weather temperatures exceeding 30 degrees Celsius. On one occasion, figuring in the humidex , the temperature felt more like 40+ degrees Celsius. Global warming?

It got me to thinking about the long hot summers of my youth. Back then there was no humidex, and apart from lamenting about the heat, unless you were a farmer, no one really thought much about the weather. It was expected that in the summer it would be hot, sometimes really hot, and come winter it would be cold, really cold at times.

In fact some winters the temperature would dip to -40 degrees Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit was the method used to record temperature before we accepted the metric system at which time Celsius became the manner in which to describe the temperature. Interesting in that the reason that we embraced the metric system was that it was thought that the whole world would change over from the Imperial system to Metric system. When the United States, Canada’s largest trading partner didn’t Canada was left hanging with having to think both systems.

Anyway, back in the day, the days of my youth when few homes were properly insulated, and air-conditioning consisted of a block of ice and a fan, nights would become a bit of a durance test. Sometimes it became so hot in the house that entire families would sleep out doors. In the cities people would gravitate to the public park and sleep out in the open. People did die from the heat, older people mainly, but we survived and we came to expect the summer heat as the norm.

I remember as a teen heading out to the sand beaches of Georgian Bay to hang out with other teens lying on the beach soaking up the sun and lathering ourselves with baby oil in order to get a dark tan. This was in the time before exposure to the sun could result in skin cancer, and the time before the depletion of the Ozone Layer. An interesting personal anecdote, I suffered greatly from acne, huge sores on my back and chest. My doctor’s advice, go lie in the sun to dry them up. It’s pretty doubtful that this would be the advice given a teen in this day and age. Anyway, we’d lie there soaking up the sun until we got so hot that we’d seek relieve with a dip in the cool waters of the Bay. The trip, however, from our towel on the beach to the water involved a sort of hop-skip-and jump routine to avoid scorching the soles of our feet on the burning hot sand.

“Those were the days”… remember the words of the song sung by Mary Hopkin, Those Were The Days. The song went on …”we thought they’d never end.” But, they did, the days of our youth that is, and now we’re old, at least some of us are, and all that we have are memories. Mostly good memories, however. Yes, I remember the sweltering heat of summers long gone, nights spent tossing and turning in damp sweats soaked sheets praying for morning to come so that I could go out to play. I remember spending the month of June in public school, no air conditioning, writing exams with one’s forearm sticking to the desk as you attempted to write answers to questions the results of which would determine your future. I remember the Ice Man with his horse drawn wagon containing blocks of ice for the family ice box refrigerator. He’d sometimes chip off a pieces of ice for the children who ran alongside the wagon in the hopes that a chip of ice would bring some relief for the afternoon heat. I remember when we got a real refrigerator and my mother would make Freshie popsicles in the ice tray. Most of all I remember the gallons of Freshie drank cold from the fridge. Orange flavour was my favourite. So many memories, family picnics in the park, row boats, fishing from the piers, picking strawberries….so many memories of long hot summers spent so long ago…..

In between writing this and that I've done a little sketching and painting, nothing serious, just enough to prevent my forgetting how to do a watercolour and keep my memories of days spent sketching alive....