Bucket of Beer

Ninety degree weather. Humidity so thick you almost need scuba gear to breathe. It must be summer in Florida again, or as I like to call it, bucket of beer weather. Yesterday, Mark and I made our usual trek up to the 'Drive', and sucked down a few brews. Honestly, I would rather be drinking my beer on Sunday afternoon in an air-conditioned bar, but my favorite bartender has moved outdoors. What I can't fathom is the fact that people lived here before the invention of air-conditioning.  Imagine what that smelled like. I was a spent, wet rag, after only an hour of sitting out there.

As bad as South Florida summers are, I still remember the heat waves we would endure back in Chicago. My family didn't have air-conditioning until I was seventeen years old, and for those first seventeen years, we made do with fans, Kool-Aid, and our  basement. Yes, back in the nineteen fifties the only way to beat the heat was go down into the basement. It was smelly, and damp, but at least five degrees or more cooler than the rest of the house. At night I would sleep up in my second floor bedroom, in seersucker, shorty pajamas, while the large window fan would whine away. It was like sleeping in hell. When I think back about those days, sitting down in that spider filled basement, or trying to sleep in that stifling hot attic, I can only think of how nice it would have been if mom had helped us out with a nice bucket filled with ice and beer.