If it gets any hotter, I’ll have to take off stuff I really ought to keep on. And yes, I’m in a very serious relationship with my refrigerator. I am, it seems always looking for something in the freezer section. Mostly just looking as the frigid air floods my body.
I know it has been this hot in past summer months but for some reason I am having trouble remembering this much intense hotness. We have a great Pyrenees, Angus who has so much white hair I feel like he is cooking underneath that beautiful coat and each morning when I open the back door to say, “good morning”, the oven-like heat staggers me.
I have, I believe, had somewhat of a green thumb as my pots of summer flowers have always been succulent and gorgeous. This year several of my beautiful specimens have just dried up and died. And I really am watering twice a week and they are on our back porch in the shade.
I remember years ago as a little girl we lived in a small house, about 1000 square feet, with no air-conditioner. We had two bedrooms with big windows and a huge window fan in one of our front windows that pulled in the air from the outside and it had to be warm air during the hotter months. I can remember sleeping nearly in the window ledge just to feel some movement of the air. Our family car also did not have air conditioning except for the 4-way kind, all four windows rolled down. When we got to our destination my long hair looked like a “cockle burr” nest.
Do you remember the beginning of school and how unmercifully hot it was? I remember buying several big box fans to help move the warm air around in the school rooms. When our little girl began school, I was entering my supportive and accommodating, ready to lend a hand days and I decided the schools needed to be cooled. I called, collected, and assembled several “Doctors, Lawyers, and Indian Chiefs” and laid out my plan to rectify this misfortune and hardship. I gathered a committee of known workers and advocators from each of our five city schools and begged and pleaded for their help. Not to my surprise, all the Mamas wanted cool air for their children.
We activated several projects to aid in our money raising efforts. We had bake sales, car washes, working for a factory folding file folders, we instigated Field Day in each school and even got ice cream donated and snacks to sell to the children, one of our retailers gave us a certain percent for each sales receipt brought into the schools, and we got a car donated and sold $100 tickets to give it away. This one got me in trouble! My phone rang one morning early, about 7 AM, and it was the Mississippi Attorney General’s office telling me I could not do this particular project as it was against the law to have this raffle in the school system. We gave the car away that day! I also got into a little scuffle with the folding of the file folders for the factory as the powers that be said it was awfully close to affecting the ‘child labor law’. We dropped that plan also. I met with every business in town and some from out of town and pled for donations. It got so that when people saw me coming, they would hold onto their pocketbooks because they knew I was asking for a contribution. But we did air condition the schools in a year’s time, and I was given the name, “Cool the Schools Lady”.
I’ve always been a champion of the needs of the people and the community so if you need anything that my knowledge would be worth, let me know and I will assist you but only in an advisory capacity at this time.
When I went back to Holmes Community College a few years ago, I always carried my lunch. This is my favorite “packed lunch”.
SALAD IN A JAR
I like Thousand Island Dressing so I began with it poured into the bottom of a quart Mason Jar then I added lettuce, as much as you like, one cut up small tomato, a small amount of cucumber, ¼ cup of red onion, 1 diced boiled egg, ¼ cup of diced ham, ¼ cup of shredded cheese, and salt and pepper. As you pour the salad out onto a plate, the dressing will be on top.
