How To Feel Warm On A Record Cold Day...Using Your Imagination
We did not have air conditioning when I grew up in the unbearable, sweltering heat of St. Louis. You know what I'm talking about if you've ever been down there for a Cardinals baseball game.
Trying to sleep was a challenge, with HOT air blowing from a window fan like a blast furnace!
(The blast furnace is the first step in the steel making process. its role is to convert raw iron ore which is a mixture of iron ore and oxygen. The blast furnace melts the ore and it purifies the ore into a liquid metal.)
The intense hotness would cause copious amounts of sweat, to such a degree that the sheets could be wrung out like a wet dishrag in the morning!
The humidity was the REAL culprit!
Let's say you were all dressed up to go to church, or teen town, you get into your non-air conditioned car, drive half a mile, and your clothing is soaking wet by the time you get there! I never looked perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but walking in with sweaty clothes was just plain nasty looking!
My mom and dad would tell a story of how they would go sleep in Lafayette Park, in St. Louis, along with many of their neighbors, on the REALLY hot nights, to get away from the oven-like heat from the brick and concrete of the housing projects where they lived.
When on rare occasions we went out for ice cream cones, we had to lick quicker than a hound dog on a Thanksgiving plate, to make sure the ice cream did not melt on to the Velvet Freeze parking lot!
The asphalt streets liquefied like molten lava, and would ruin a pair of P.F. Flyers if you dared to walk on the black stickiness of darkness!
Think about those days in that blistering hot summer, when your lawn had burned up, you had to use one of those misting fans that you squirt on your face to survive the outdoor concert, and the hot rocks burned your tootsies as you walked down to the St. Francis River, in the Missouri Ozarks, as the temps drop to 20 below zero tomorrow!
Maybe you'll feel warmer.
