It’s been really hot in eastern Pennsylvania for this entire month. At the beginning of summer I bought various outdoor games for my son to play but alas, it’s been too hot to enjoy them. I am so grateful for an air conditioned home and regularly thank God for the privilege. It’s made me reflect on a couple of things, like how when I was a kid, most middle class people didn’t have air conditioned homes, just fans or, at best, window unit ACs. I can remember the upstairs being too hot at night to sleep there and instead going to the living room couch for whatever respite was available. Our neighbor’s mom used to stand over a hot gas stove cooking vats of tomato sauce in her house dress—I can still picture her glistening face, but for her, it wasn’t out of the ordinary. That’s just how life was. I can’t imagine what Independence Hall must have been like for the delegates to the Continental Congress that steamy summer of 1776, with all those men in their formal clothes baking inside that room, while they tried to keep their tempers in check!
My local paper asked people whether they would prefer the extreme temperatures of the mid-to-upper 90s (with the humidity that makes my hair take on an otherworldly appearance), or the freezing cold single digits of winter’s depths. Just out of curiosity, what would you choose? It’s a tough choice for me, but I think with AC, I’d take the heat, without, the cold—I can always pile on an extra blanket!
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