rudderless

Stifling

I know I’ve belabored the heat of the last month, but I felt somewhat justified when I heard today that after one of the coldest winters on record in South Florida (and no complaints about that!), we had the hottest May ever. Ever. This morning the heat index was well over 90, before 9 AM. We look forward to a climate where winter is the time to batten down the hatches and cozy up around a fire. To make slow-cooked food and loaves of bread in an oven. Right now the oven is off limits. In fact, I have cooked little other than coffee this week, trying to keep the boat at a reasonable temperature in the late afternoon. It’s a good challenge- finding ways to feed a family with veggies and salads and bread baked in someone elses’s oven. If anyone has a favorite no-cook recipe, I’d love to have it. My sister’s black-eyed pea salad is on the list for this week.

These are time I miss my grandmothers. Peachy would have had an entire compendium of recipes fit for the Southern heat. Granny Ross would have had practical suggestions, and maybe a jar of homemade pickles from her sister’s garden. When it starts to feel hot on our little yacht, I try to imagine not so long ago, living in the southern part of Georgia, in the summers without air conditioning. Or living in Houston, Texas, where my mom grew up, lying under the attic fan on hot nights, running across hot asphalt, barefoot. East Texas can be a very hot place.

Recently I came across a recording of my grandfather, telling the particular circumstances of his birth, on August 20, 1917. He was born in a small town in Eastern Alabama, not far from Columbus, Georgia, where he lived as an adult.

“I have often wondered what it was like to birth an overweight baby in Camp Hill, Alabama in August of 1917. Must have been terribly hot. All the windows would have been open. I think the house had screens, as I was told. There was a spigot over the porch, with fresh water. That was the sum total of the plumbing other than chimney pots and a privy in the backyard. Dr. Louis Hamner presided over the proceedings, I’m told, and apparently they went quite normally for those times.”

Quite normally for those times. As hot as hot can be.
I wish I could channel some of that normalcy, just to ask a few questions. Get some advice, and continue to feel grateful for my particular situation, with wet kids every night and the cool confines of our boat to slip into.