As a teenager, I worked in the fields during the summer, and heat was never an issue. After working under the sun for a month, all heat feels the same, all humidity is normal, sweat is the uniform of the day, and sundown is quitting time.
This prepared me for working on the road, in triple digit heat, with asphalt that’stwo hundred fifty degrees as it comes out of the spreader. Get close enough to the asphalt and even the gnats will leave you alone.
Working on bridges usually meant there was water, but those structures that spanned overflows or just large holes that sometimes heldwater, it was like being in the bottom of a well with a heat lamp positioned over it.
Heat in South Georgia, for the better part of my life, simply was.
September is here, and last year it didn’t cool off for most of the month. This year, the first days of September have gifted us with temperatures in the mid to upper sixties, and it is heaven.
I did some limb cutting to get debris away from the fence the Big Pine fell on. And then I had to replace the fence. I started early in the morning and worked until noon. The heat nearly got me. The first part of August is unkind, to say the least, and at sixty-five, I feel my age more and more the higher the temperature rises.
Through the years, the new hires got younger and younger, and softer and softer. The generations raised on the inside of houses, nestled comfortably with their screens and air conditioning, were not accustomed to working outside in the heat, and some could not. Some would not. Management began allowing employees to sit in their truck with AC and cell phones, while work went unobserved. Being out there in the heat with the work was the only way to learn how its done, but the younger generation wanted only to stay out of the heat.
In good truth, theywere never trained to endure. I’ve watched grown men in their early twenties panic when they’ve been in the heat for too long. I’ve had employees quit rather than sweat. I’ve seen men who claimed they’ve played football in high school go home from work because they were too hot.
I went a few months without a work truck at one point. I had someone drop me off at the asphalt plant with my lunch cooler, I would catch the first truck out at six in the morning, then catch the last truck back in at seven in the evening. Someone would pick me up and take me back to the office, and by the time I got home I had time to eat supper, take a shower, and go to bed.
They forgot me one night, and I had to walk to a payphone and call for a ride to come get me. The guy that forgot me had gone out drinking so when he finally arrived he was almost too drunk to drive. After that incident, they got me a truck. It had a hole in the floorboard and didn’t have air conditioning. But it was a ride.
September. Cool breezes and nice sunrises. And the memories of summer, easing into the past again.
Take Care,
Mike
I am 82 now but can well remember working in the fields day after day, coming home where mama had cooked supper on an old wood burning stove, then going to bed without even a fan; just hoping for a bit of a breeze to come through the window. Yep! The younger ones have been spoiled to A/C, and now, so have I…….
Emmette, at a certain age, you get to be spoiled. I’m going to stop axe work when I hot seventy.
I love my AC. In my house, in my car whatever. But last summer I worked out in the heat. We were moving storage units. Packed up with too many things that were too heavy for us to move on our own. We still had to do it. Have I mentioned that I work for a government funded program? Yeah, when they tell us they can’t hire someone to do it, that means I get to do it. I’m 56 now. Last year I was 55 and was doing that work in mid summer, in Texas. One of the ladies that came with me to help me is in her very early 40s, she kept up, barely. No one else can do it. Hey we had shade for the most part. And cold water. I hope they have a plan for when I retire.
Chick, I can remember one of the head guys saying we had spare people to move a lot of boxed up records around. Like hundreds of boxes. He thought he would get volunteers. He got crickets. This was a month before I retired and I told them I wasn’t going to even look at heavy lifting before I left.
Here in NE IL it is getting down into the 50s at night, so our A/C right now is open windows. It is nice.
During summers while in college, I worked for my county highway department either flagging traffic or working with asphalt. This was in SW OH so temperatures would be in the 90s with high humidity. And as you mentioned, asphalt is hot–and standing on it and raking it smooth was steamy–but stepping away from it felt like stepping into a refrigerator. This job encouraged me to get my degree so I would work indoors in air conditioning.
Like others, the older I get (Mike, you have several years on me), the less I like the heat and humidity. I guess it is fortunate that medicine I take makes me feel colder.
Tim, once I retired for good I started taking a lot better care of my body. I still have some pretty good heat resistant but I don’t push it. Whatever I am doing doesn’t have to be finished on one day.
Except writing.
Mike, that’s good. Pace yourself so you don’t over do it.
With writing–just try to stop before writer’s cramp hits. Then take a break.
As a young teen, I got a job laboring in the fields of a small farm stand. I won the job out of 7, or so tryouts. I thumbed and walked the miles to get there until I bought a bike. $12, a weeks pay. The old man and his wife treated me great. Tea in the morning, a sandwich and cake lunch and cold drinks brought to me out in the field as I hoed, and whatnot. When the crops started coming in, I got sent home with a brown paper bag of vegetables. I loved what I learned. My Mom & Dad made me quit because they saw me swaying back and forth as I came home on the bike. I hated quitting. Turned out, I just can’t take extremes. To this day, I get reprimanded for overdoing it. Some of us are just not made to push ourselves as far as we imagine we can take it.
I think that overdoing it thing is a generational motivation thing. Go until you can’t. Keep driving on.
Yeah, I am done with that, too.