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When the Big Heat hits during the Fourth of July family gatherings on the farm, we move
the barbecue into the corn crib alley. Must be the concrete floors or the way
air flows through the old grain storage structure, but it feels like
refrigeration compared to the 100 degrees in the sun. “Always been the
coolest building on the farm,” Dad says. He points to the nearby house, now
air-conditioned and filled with his grandkids and great-grandkids. “It used
to have a screened porch on the west side, shaded by trees. In the 1930s we
could survive the heat by sleeping there. Other families I knew slept in
their yards just trying to catch a breeze.”
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With persistent heat in June and July, Midwest farmers worry about crop
production and shifting weather patterns. Some old timers also bring out stories of ice
houses, cool basements, and survival in the pre-AC era. Records are falling now,
but many still use the 1930s as the example of iconic heat. Farm work had
to continue even in the dust and ruin of the Depression Era droughts. Dad was a
young witness: “Old Clyde told me they were threshing oats on a beastly hot
day, when one of their work horses suddenly shivered a few times, buckled at
the knees, and collapsed to the ground. Heat killed him.”
Occasionally, farmers bought frozen 50-pound blocks from the ice house in
town, but most would cool milk, water, and maybe homemade beer in well pits or
storm cellars. Dad remembers, “Farmers might use those thick old crockery jugs
to take water out to the fields. They’d wrap wet burlap around the jar and
place it in the shade of an oat shock to keep the water drinkable.”
Members of my generation also knew old timers with peculiar
techniques. We baled hay for a farmer who wore flannel shirts and pants tied
with baling twine at the cuffs to “keep out the heat and help produce sweat
that would cool by evaporation.” A few others wore long underwear through
most of the summer heat. They were also the characters most likely to spin the
heat-induced yarns. “Mighty warm in the barn yesterday. Old Bossy’s udder
was so hot I had to use pot holders to milk her, and she only produced
evaporated milk anyway.”
Some of the true stories were about as strange as the whoppers.
Dad told us what happened to a farmer one hot summer night. “Myron’s father
took the horse out to cultivate late in the evening because the daytime heat was too
severe. He sat on the undulating seat behind the horse, above the
waist-high corn, a full moon streaming down on the tops of the corn stalks. The
wind rippled along the rows, producing a wave effect in the light, and Myron’s
father became moon sick. Nausea got him and he had to quit for the
night.”
Air-conditioned tractor cabs and climate-controlled barns have
changed farming during the dog days of summer. When I was a kid working
the fields, we’d try to adjust a wobbly canvas umbrella strapped to the tractor seat
as we sipped ice water from thermos jugs. During chore time in the late
afternoon heat, we’d throw bales from stifling haymows or maybe climb into a claustrophobic
grain bin to shovel shelled corn into feed buckets. Before our farm house had air conditioning, Mom would set blocks of ice in front of fans so we could recover with a cool breeze.
Maybe I can morph into one of those old timers and spin a few yarns about summer heat for my grandchildren. "Yep, we had a small chicken coop when I was a kid--the smell of damp feathers in the heat, downy fluff floating in the air, and hens clucking lethargically if at all. It was so hot, the eggs I gathered were hard-boiled and ready to eat."
by Dan Gogerty (top pic from oldworldwisconsin.jpg and bottom pic from pinterest.com)
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