WEATHER OR NOT

I'm writing this while a violent thunderstorm rages outside my front door.  Lots and lots of rain! My tomato plants are smiling.

Down the road state-wise, temperatures are trying to reach 100 degrees.  Something is keeping that heat from reaching Maryland - at least for now.

Growing up in New Bedford, Massachusetts I seem to remember that a heat wave was defined as a temperature of 80 degrees.  We never needed an air conditioner.  I think that only department stores and funeral homes had them. 

If you felt warm, you could drive down to Clark's Cove and let cooling ocean breezes waft through your car's windows.

Or, as I often did as a kid, travel by two trolly cars to Hazelwood Beach and go swimming in that same water body for hours.  (All for a grand total of 25 cents,) 

(New Bedford was home to 11 miles of water-frontage.  Lots of places to swim, like in the Acushnet River where the polluted run-off from factories like Cornell-Dublier diluted the brackish water and somehow swiftly healed open wounds.)

Or, as some of us kids did, dive into the harbor water to retrieve dimes tossed into the filthy river by Coast Guardsmen and sailors.  (A 10 cents retrieval was a great incentive for a kid back then.)

Or,  you could travel to near-by Horseneck Beach and swim in the surf, after looking out for the notorious undertow.      

There certainly were a lot of fun things to do back then.  (As an old man remembers.)   

        

As a High School student, I spent 7 hours each day working in the basement ol the local YMCA.  It was always 90 degrees there, an ideal temperature and humidity for the hundreds of water bugs that would mysteriously appear when the lights were turned off.  I didn't particularly like the sweaty smells of the naked men, but I did enjoy the heat.

When I joined the Air Force I spent 6 months in Biloxi, Mississippi, where the temperature always rivaled that which I experienced in the YMCA basement.  But my next assignment placed me atop a snowy and frigid mountain in Germany.  Quite a change!

Here in Maryland the old New England phrase also applies:  "If you don't like the weather, wait a minute!"

BTW:  Ambrose Bierce remarked:  Weather is "the climate of an hour.  A permanent topic of conversation among persons it doesn't interest ..."

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