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
