I grew up in a tropical climate, so, when I moved eight hours north, I didn’t expect the summers to be as hot.
Boy, was I wrong! When I moved here, it was because I was looking for a small town that was still in the south.
My old home town had just gotten too big for my tastes and I wanted a safe place to raise my children. I brought the kids up here a few months before my husband joined us, and rented us a rather nice little three bedroom mobile home with central heat and air conditioning for a really good price. Then, the heat wave came. Every day, the temperatures went up to over a hundred and five degrees, the heat index ranged between one hundred and ten to one hundred and twenty, and even my central air conditioning was useless. I went to my landlady’s house to complain, and her place was just as hot as mine. I went to my sister’s house on the other side of town. She had window air conditioners in every room, and even her house was unbearably hot. I did manage to find a way to keep us cool. The tiny middle bedroom in my mobile home would actually stay pretty cool if I ran the A/C on full blast and kept the door closed, so, we spent about a week in that room. I worked the overnight shift at a local restaurant, and, when I got home with the kids in the morning, we got food, drinks, toys and books and the kids and I would stay in that room and enjoy the cool air conditioning while I dozed. At times I felt bad keeping the kids in that little room, but, they didn’t seem to mind. It seemed it was the only place in town to stay cool.