It's Getting Hot in Here

It's a little-known fact that summer weather in the Delaware Valley is quite similar to summer weather in Mississippi. Harold was born and raised in Mississippi; he likes it. I spent my best summers in Canada. I do not. It's one of the few subjects we disagree on, the others being the optimum distance for following the car ahead of you on the interstate and whether it's really a good idea to smoke cigars and drink whiskey.

Now that summer has come to Lambertville, I have begun resorting to the usual strategems to keep my brain from baking like a moist meatloaf, a process that begins somewhere between 83 F and 90 F, depending on the humidity. The steps that I take to cool the house are modest. There is a ceiling fan over the dining room table. I turn it on. There are windows. I close them about eleven a.m. As the steam rises on the streets outside, the animals seek shade, the plants revel in the wet warmth, and Harold relaxes on the front porch, reading a good book, enjoying the hot steam on his skin and lighting up another Ropo de Stinko, I retire to my office with a tall glass of iced limeade to see what sort of trouble my characters will get into next.

Sometimes I turn on the air conditioner in the attic and open the door, letting the cool air flow down into the second-floor hall, where it can be directed into the second floor rooms by means of whisper-quiet fans. Sometimes I put crushed ice on my neck, but only because the chiropractor said it was good for the pinched nerve. In this way we get through the summer.

You may ask yourself, why don't they have central air? First off, because Harold hates air conditioning even worse than I hate the heat, and secondly because neither one of us could stand the noise. To say nothing of forking over all that money to the electric company.

As far as I know we're both perfectly happy. And so to work. It looks like a hot one today.

Kate Gallison