Memory Lane, How did you keep yourself cool in the hot summer heat? Running through a sprinkler? the inflatable 4 ring

[debm55]

that needed to be filled and emptied every day? Or other methods? We had the inflatable pool.

[LoisB]

1. Water hose.

[hlthe2b]

3. Yup... that was about it. Occasionally my Mom would take us to a community pool.

But hose and shade trees (and a hot house with fans only).

[debm55]

6. Yep, that is right. hlthe2b. We didn't have a community pool. So it was the jumping through the sprinkler and the little

inflatable.

[hlthe2b]

22. Yeah.. when I say "community" pool, not like an HOA-Subdivision pool, but a city pool 20 miles away...

So, it was rare and only because my Mom would teach swimming on occasion there

[debm55]

23. Oh, I knew, but living in a Steel Mill town, did not give us a community pool. Carnegie Library in the little town had a

an indoor pool where lessons were offered. But my mother said it was too expensive--I believe it was a dime. My cousin used to sneak me in. It was outside and useful when it rained

[LoisB]

21. That was my life too. All the fans did was blow around hot air. If we were

fortunate, we might get a quarter to go to the air conditioned movie theater.

[johnp3907]

2. Garden hose!

We only had one sprinkler, and that was for my dad’s garden!

[debm55]

7. Thank you very much for sharing with us, johnp3907

[Lochloosa]

4. Picking mushrooms and going to the sinkholes. Big Dismal wasa favorite

Leon Sinks Geological Area - Wikipedia https://share.google/oHmtEJ8kiJdajNrfK

Big Dismal – 100 foot drop to the water which drops another 100 feet underwater with a cave entrance at 80 feet down.[5]

I only learned of the cave system in the 80s

[debm55]

8. Thank you very much for sharing with us, Lochloosa.

[True Dough]

5. Ice

in my tighty-whities!

[debm55]

9. HAHAHAHHHAHAHAHHHAH. OMG. Thank you True Dough.

[ret5hd]

20. uhhhmmm...shrinkage.

[unc70]

10. No way to keep cool. Just awful

Miserable. Fans just moved the hot air around. Lows often above 80, with highs 95-102. Ocean was fairly near, but rarely got there. Mostly did field work on the farm. About 5 miles to nearest paved road so we were fairly isolated. By the mid 1950s we got a paved road, indoor plumbing, TV, and finally a telephone.

"It's not the heat; it's the humidity." BS! Mold and bugs everywhere.

[debm55]

11. Thank you very much for sharing with us, unc70, As a kid, we didn't have AC. I agree. , fans did nothing. My husband

and I got whole house AC about 35 years ago. What a delight.

[mucifer]

12. There are cooling small towels :

https://arcticcool.com/products/cooling-towel?srsltid=AfmBOorIYlFDT7ZvjjtUQgHJ0ZKqN8fmmdNnqexBD-A1k0PrbItIvbiJ
You get them wet and they stay wet and cool for a while and you put them around your neck. Helps a lot.

[debm55]

13. Thank you very much , mucifer. I wil have to try.

[NNadir]

14. As a kid, I didn't know a damned thing about thermodynamics, so what I did was pretty dumb.

I'd take ice from the freezer, carry it up to my small attic room, and put it in the swamp cooler my parents gave me that was on my desk by the small open window.

The problem, on reflection, now that I know about thermodynamics, was the freezer/refrigerator was in the kitchen, that was directly under my room. The freezer put out heat of course, which I didn't know or recognize but I certainly remember thinking the swamp cooler didn't do all that much.

I may have gotten a small amount of cooling from the evaporation of the water, but I recognize now that it was extremely inefficient to be running the refrigerator below my room.

That room was always hot.

I drove by the house where I grew up a few years ago; the new owners extended it quite a bit and seem to have put in a central air system.

They needed it.

I was always covered in sweat in that room. Damn it was hot.

In my late adolescence, early teens, my parents bought an above ground swimming pool, one of those four feet jobs. For a few years I'd jump in it, but it got boring.

When I was old enough to drive; it was the beach. There were always available beaches on Long Island, and the question was North Shore or South Shore.

[debm55]

15. Great post, NNadir. We have a Cape Cod house. ---two bedroom/attic upstairs. Even though, we have whole house AC. it is

still very hot. We bought a room AC for my son.

[NNadir]

16. That's what I grew up in, a "Cape Cod" house.

When I was a boy, air conditioning was something the rich people had, not us.

[debm55]

18. I remember sleeping outside as the house seemed to hold the heat.Never had AC in the car either . AC was a luxury that

many couldn't afford. Thank you NNadir.

[House of Roberts]

17. I never had a house without AC.

There was a wall unit in the corner of the den of the little house we lived in until Dec. 1964. We moved into a house with central heat and air then, and us kids spent a lot of time in the basement, which was cooler than upstairs in the summer. Back in those days, I don't remember feeling near as hot when outside, as you would now.
Today, for example, it's 83 with an 88 heat index and 69% humidity. Too hot for me to do anything plus we had heavy rain last night, hence the high humidity.

[debm55]

19. Thank you very much for sharing with us, House of Roberts. Somehow the heat didn't bother me, during the day. but at

night it did. We never had AC in the house. Lived there until I was in 9th grade.

[surrealAmerican]

24. There was a playground, probably about a half mile from our apartment ...

... that had a sprinkler. To walk there on a hot summer day seemed to take forever.

[debm55]

32. Loved those sprinklers at the playground. Thank you for sharing your memory with us.surrealAmerican.

[jgo]

25. slip n slide - great fun

[debm55]

33. I loved that, jgo. Great fun and wonderful memories.

[greatauntoftriplets]

26. I lived four blocks from Lake Michigan.

My mother hated the beach, but a friend's mother loved it and would take us until we were old enough to go on our own. For the days we didn't go to the lake, there was the hose. When I was about 9, my parents bought a decently sized pool that my father took down in winter. It was about 3 feet deep and 8 feet wide so my friends and I swam in that often.

When I was in high school, my father joined the local Elks Club. It was in a beautiful district and a 10-minute bike ride from home. They had a great in-ground pool.

[debm55]

34. That sounds wonderful, greatauntoftriplets. Thank you For the memories.

[Permanut]

27. Neighborhood pools open every day, and I was there most days..

Creston pool was about a mile away, a hot ride on a bicycle but worth it.

My Mother had a different way to cool off. She was one of six children of a legally blind single mother, growing up in the middle of the Great Depression. Her Father was killed in 1922 in an industrial accident, a cave-in.

So the family had almost no resources, say to escape the heat. She found, though, that if she let cold water run from the faucet over her wrists for a minute or two, it had a cooling effect.

I have tried it, and she was right.

[debm55]

35. I am going to have to try that. Thank you very much for sharing, Permanut.

[MIButterfly]

28. Sprinkler

So much fun to run through it on a hot summer day. ☀️

[debm55]

31. Yes it was , Thank you very much,MIButterfly for sharing the memoring with us.

[gladium et scutum]

29. Most of July and August

slept on a hammock on the patio. During the day, a dip in the luke warm irrigation pond was as good as it got.

[debm55]

30. Thank you very much for sharing with us, gladium et scutum. I slept outside too.

[Aristus]

36. I grew up on military posts mainly in the South.

Summers were always blistering.

Everyone had yard sprinklers. Had to keep the lawns nice or the neighbors would complain. Every neighborhood had at least one family who had a Slip ‘N’ Slide; in summertime, their house was the most popular on the street.

And of course, Army posts have superb recreational facilities, including public pools. One of my fondest memories of summers when I was a kid was waiting for my mother’s soap operas to be over, so she could take us to the pool. To this day, the memory of the closing credits music of the last soap opera gives me a thrill. Time to go swimming!

[LogDog75]

37. Keeping cool wasn't a problem as a kid

My dad was in the Navy so we moved around a lot. As a kid, we really didn't worry about the heat because we didn't know the problems with heat. If it was too hot, we went inside or got in the shade. We didn't have air conditioning so during the summer, we went to the base pool at mid-morning and returned about 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

[AllaN01Bear]

38. Lay on the floor w a fan on high and a pan or pot filled w ice water.

Mom later bought a window a.c and thermal drapes.i lived in a burb of l.a called Glendora ca 25 mi east of la.

[Brother Buzz]

39. We we hit triple-digit weather, i used to haul a folding chaise lounge from sporting goods to the frozen food isle...

And luxuriate. Then they store got a new poo-poo head store manager and put the kibosh on my brilliant solution.