Hot and Cold

I grew up in a lot of places which had zero A/C and limited heat.  Let me tell you I appreciate some wamth  on a cold day and come cool on a hot day.  If you've read any of this blog you should realize I grew up in Eastern Kentucky during the fifties and sixties,  a little bit of the seventies.  I grew up without indoor pluming for the most part and never any air conditioning and mostly without even an electric fan.  That was summer though.  In winter heat varied from a wood/coal fireplace to a gas heater the heated most of the house to one that heated about five feet around it.

In summer, in most times, I bathed in the creek and used sand for soap.  In winter I'd heat a wash pan full of hot water and take a "Whore Bath".  It was not the shortness of time between customers that drove me as it was the doggone cold and trying to wash all the "stinky places" before the water got cold. 

We lived at the 'big' house in West Van Lear for about three or four years and that was the only time I can recall having a real bathroom and enough heat in the house to spend enough time naked to take a good bath.

Then going to sleep at night was another adventure.  In the summer I'd have all my windows open with no sheets on me just waiting until it got late enough for the night to cool down to where I could sleep.  In the winter it was a rush from the living room where the small amount of heat was upstairs to my bed, stripping clothes in a hurry and jumping into bed under the electric blanket.  Thank goodness for an electric blanket in the winter.

Now a winter trip to the bathroom (outhouse) was also a "treat".  :-)  From my bed, down stairs to that bedroom, though the living room and kitchen, out the door and across the porch for a fifty foot run to get there and then a shivering stay with the trip reversed.  Want to know how good an electric blanket feels after that adventure?

Heat, though, was pretty much a "just deal with it" kind of proposition.  No changing it, no ameliorating it except for a dip in the "swimming hole".  The swimming hole was not really deep enough for swimming though.  It was just deep enough to submerge one's whole body under the water and it took one heck of a walk to get there. 

I recall working for hours and hours in the hot, summer sun loading bailed hay and stacking it in the barn just so my two cousins could go to the "Hack Hole" with me to cool off.  That was a day I'll never forget.  I can recall bending over and grabbing a bale of hay by the bindings and lifting it up to the truck bed and my vision would go completely blank with the effort.  But, let me say, that dunking in the creek was a wonderful thing.

Being outside in the cold was not so much of an issue as we had to wear coats and "long johns" inside as well.  Outside we, at least, had exercise to help warm us.  I stayed outside a lot in cold weather for that and other reasons.    In the summer I'd just lie on the porch swing and read.  I hated the heat then more than the cold.

Think of it.  In the heat you can only take of so many pieces of clothing but in the cold you can put on innumerable items to help keep warm. 

Still I hate the very hot days of summer and the very cold days of winter but mostly for different reasons.  I'm blessed now with a good heat pump for hot and cold weather but I have to walk a long way from the parking lot to the building where I work and both the heat and cold make me sick so I'm trying not to throw up until I get into the heat or A/C of the building.  Not a lot of fun but sure is better than when I was going to school when I don't think we even had A/C.