This summer’s heat will be something we remember and talk about for years to come. I remember wearing a winter coat the last of April during a neighborhood cleanup and getting my shorts out the next week for the first of May. We only had a day and half of spring! But this is nothing compared to 2 years I know about. I was pregnant with my son Chris during the summer of 1983 which still holds the record for the most 90 degree days (58 to be exact) in any one summer. I had been laid off from my job at Lee Wards Craft Store and was drawing unemployment. We had been in our old house in Irvington for 5 years and only had a window unit air conditioner in our bedroom upstairs. Our 9 year old daughter slept on a mat on the floor at the end of our bed during that hot summer. I spent a lot of time in that bedroom. My husband said we’d have to get a ceiling fan for the kitchen for Christmas and I said “forget Christmas we’re getting one now!” That fan lasted over 25 years (they don’t make’m that good anymore). In case you’ve never been pregnant, a pregnancy adds probably 10 degrees or more to your body so you can be really miserable.
Several years ago, before my husband Steve’s Aunt Margaret passed away at the age of 99, she told me that she had survived an equally horribly hot summer — the summer of 1936. She was living with her husband Bob in Richmond, Indiana. They moved back to Indy temporarily to live with her parents (my husband’s grandparents) for her first child to be born in Indy — living with them in a little bungalow that her Dad had built at 1018 N. LaSalle (right behind what is now Audrey’s Place Thrift Store). Aunt Margaret and Uncle Bob’s son Eddie was born August 10, 1936. Eddie’s younger sister Susie recently told me “mother said Eddie was covered in heat rash head to toe, blocks of ice were kept in the nursery to cool the babies” (he was born in Methodist hospital and so was his little sister). Aunt Margaret told me she was afraid he wasn’t going to make it — the temperature was over 100 degrees for days. Babies don’t handle heat well, because they don’t sweat and their little internal thermostats aren’t developed yet. He survived to marry and have 3 lovely daughters, the youngest of which we see regularly here in Indy (he has since passed too).
I Googled 1936 and only got a few of the incredibly hot days listed including: 104º on 6/28, 103º on 6/29, 105º on 7/6, 106º on 7/14, 103º on 7/15. The hottest temperature ever recorded in Indiana was 116º in Collegeville (really small town outside Renssellaer, northwest Indiana) on July 14, 1936.
From Wikipedia I got the following info: “The 1936 North American heat wave was one of the most severe heat waves in the modern history of North America. It took place in the middle of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and caused catastrophic human suffering and an enormous economic toll. The death toll exceeded 5,000, and huge numbers of crops were destroyed by the heat and lack of moisture.” Unfortunately, it was followed by one of the coldest winters on record! Let’s hope history doesn’t repeat itself this year.
This summer as I watched Randy Ollis (my favorite weatherman) on TV give the high temperature the day before. He always gives the record high and low and for days in mid-July I noticed the year was 1936 over and over again for the high record and I remembered Aunt Margaret’s story. Aunt Margaret was an elegant well educated lady (reminded me of Queen Elizabeth). She was a Tech Alum (1931), as am I (1967) and my son Chris (2002).
So last week’s 90’s we hope are over for the year, but be grateful you either have air-conditioning or a good fan and you’re not pregnant.