The Old Paths: Is Your Heat Running?

**This was originally published on Thursday, October 25, 2012, in my newspaper column, “The Old Paths,” in The Stokes News. Due to a website change a few years ago, the publishing company broke all links to our old articles which were archived online. This was a tragic mistake and resulted in the loss of thousands of newspaper articles. Little by little, I am putting my old columns on this blog so that they can be preserved. Each column may be updated to reflect present times when transferred to this blog.**

Sometimes you feel as lonely as a salmon in Belews Lake. You think you’re the only one who feels the way you do. You wonder if perhaps you are an oddball—a square peg trying to fit into a round-holed world.

Then something happens to prove you are not alone. Yes, you may be in the minority, but rejoice—there are others like you!

For example, I once thought I must be really weird to always reach past the first few slices of bread in the bag to get some middle pieces for my sandwich. When I confessed my idiosyncrasy on Facebook, numbers of folks chimed in excitedly that they did the same thing and had thought they were the only ones.

In my relatively new mode of admitting potentially embarrassing things (I don’t care as much what people think as I get older), I decided a couple of weeks ago to confess another oddity of my existence. I told my friends on Facebook that I find it challenging to see how long I can wait to turn on my heat in the autumn. (Mind you, I typed that post with hands that felt like ice on a colder-than-normal October morning!)

I like to tell myself that it’s because I am thrifty, but I wonder if it doesn’t go deeper than that. Perhaps it is indeed the challenge of the ordeal which makes me freeze for a while before turning that dial from AC to heat. (Disclaimer: I do not torture my children with the cold. They use a portable quartz infrared heater and stay cozy.)

I imagine that some of you are nodding right now or grinning as you think, “So it’s not just me!” No, I found out from Facebook comments that we are part of a large company.

My hubster—a thrifty, somewhat oddball soul like me—was the first to chime in. He said, “Let’s see if we can make it until November.”

Before long, a friend agreed, “We are covered to our eyeballs but no heat till November.” My cousin’s wife said she was determined not to turn on her heat just yet. A friend much farther north commented that she picks a specific time to turn on her heat and tries to stick to it. It might mean wearing socks to bed or throwing on another blanket, but doggone it, we’re going to hold out!

Three different friends told me it was “the principle of the thing,” leaving me to ponder just what the principle is. I have some ideas. Bear with me as I psychoanalyze you heat-postponers.

For some of us, like Angela, it’s a matter of conserving fossil fuels—a worthy principle indeed. If we all held out a little longer turning on the heat (or AC in the spring), we would save huge amounts of the fossil fuels we don’t want to use up.

Another principle also involves conservation—of our money! Don’t you love the lower power bills that come in spring and fall? There were times in my past that money was so tight it might mean buying fewer groceries if we ran the heat any more than was absolutely necessary. Even now with better financial conditions, my decision to once more be a stay-at-home mom means we must be very thrifty.

My daddy clings to yet another principle—that it’s a matter of building toughness of character. This is the man who would, in fun, make me bear him tickling my foot when I was a kid—telling me to set my mind that I could take it, that it would make me tough. It worked, and I’m grateful. Try tickling my foot; I won’t budge.

You say, “How silly.” No, not really. Such principles in seemingly “silly” things carry over into more important things. That “I can take it” stamina that Daddy helped build into my character propelled me through the births of my last three children with no medicine at all—a healthier situation for all involved.

It has helped me be able to go for 18 years (this coming December) without taking a pain reliever—yes, not even one Tylenol or Advil. This has to be good for my liver and overall health. America has become such a nation of convenience that we self-medicate at the merest hint of pain.

Daddy preaches that we have become a country of spoiled people who “can’t take it anymore.” He tells me how people on the old paths used to function just fine without AC. Now we virtually melt without it. It’s a matter of how we condition ourselves.

Some of my Facebook friends agree. A pastor friend of mine commented that she hasn’t used the heat yet either and tells her family that their bodies just need to make the adjustment to cold weather. My pal Jill believes the first cold spell “hits you the most, like a jolt, then your body starts adjusting.”

Conservation of fossil fuels, money savings, character training—have I named the principle that describes why YOU don’t run the heat until the last minute? (Yes, I know there are many of you like Tonya who says she doesn’t want to be uncomfortable in her own home or Chris who declares she isn’t interested in freezing to death! But bear with me as I address my minority group.)

I believe there is another principle at work here—the need to prove our toughness, not to be bested by the elements. This rationale is similar to my daddy’s principle of building character but is perhaps rooted more in pride. Yes, it was possibly my stubborn pride which made me suffer in a house where the thermostat has registered as low as 54 degrees several mornings recently.

This is the principle that comes into play when we turn the issue into a contest. Angela has a friend in Colorado who takes part in a delay-of-heat contest called “Freeze Your Buns OFF.” Holly tells how she and her boyfriend would have a competition “to see who could go the longest without turning on the heat.” (Once she won because she went to his house and turned on the heat. Talk about fierce competition!)

Whatever the reason, many of us in Stokes County have been uncomfortable here in mid-October as autumn hit us with the first cold temperatures of the season. And although warmer weather may resurface, don’t be fooled into thinking it will last.

Either bring out the flannel sheets, fuzzy socks and fleece hoodies and grit your teeth a little longer or turn that heat on! It’s a long time ‘til spring. . .

The Old Paths: Kenny Loggins was right–the heat is on!

Photo taken by my friend Billy Payne of Sandy Ridge (Buffalo Ridge Imaging on Facebook)

Yep, Kenny Loggins could’ve been singing about us here in the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina this week. No, I don’t believe he was talking about record-breaking July weather when he sang “The Heat Is On,” but nonetheless, if the song fits, sing it.

It officially hit only 96 today (the “only” is in reference to the 100+ degree heat we had a few weeks back for a string of days). My friend Ben just posted on Facebook that the heat index in Raleigh where he works is 107 degrees. Tomorrow, it should be about the same–“Same song, second verse, a little bit louder and a whole lot worse.”

When I walked outside a while ago to talk to my friend Lori on the phone, the sultry summer atmosphere assaulted my senses. When I re-entered the house, the cool air felt like a Colorado mountaintop.

For a few minutes.

Then my body acclimated itself to this inside air that is not cool enough despite the AC system that runs incessantly outside my window, ensuring that Duke Energy will feast on many of our hard-earned dollars next month. Now I feel uncomfortably warm even inside my house. Another friend of mine complained that her thermostat is set on 72 but that the temperature inside her house is 83.

Photo taken by my friend Michael Mullins of King

I personally love the heat of summer, but is that because I don’t work outdoors? My father-in-law fights this heat while working outside building houses, putting on roofs, etc. I feel guilty about daring to complain about the heat when I think about him or those I’ve seen recently doing highway work on freshly poured, steaming asphalt. Makes even my tobacco priming days seem tame.

And I also must question if I’d love this heat in the absence of air conditioning. What did we do in the pre-AC days?

I asked that question in the Danbury Public Library one day. A lady I didn’t know, Sharon Brown Craddock, said that growing up, she went swimming in the river nearly every day up in Sandy Ridge off Amostown Road when the heat was on. Nora Lankford, the Danbury librarian, chimed in that they swam in the river, too, on hot days but only after the day’s work was done.

I don’t even like heating up the oven on days like this due to the intense heat it generates. If I had been raised with my friend Mable Booth of Westfield and her nine siblings, I wouldn’t have gotten hot food on a sizzling summer’s day. Booth recalls how her mother would get up at 4:30 a.m. each morning to fire up the old woodstove and cook a big meal.

The large family would work all morning in the fields before returning to the house to eat whatever their mother had cooked in the early dawn hours, even though it was usually cold by then. Supper would consist of lunch leftovers, with perhaps a new pone of cornbread added.

You see, using the woodstove in the middle of an oppressively hot summer’s day created entirely too much heat in a house with no AC other than occasional breezes through open windows and doors. Sharon remembers that her family often cooked out at the river for this very reason.

As I chatted with the local folks one day about the old paths of summertime, a lady I didn’t know joined our conversation. Linda Gallagher of Brooklyn, NY, interjected that when she was growing up in a row house in the big city, her mother wouldn’t dare use the stove on midsummer days. She would make salads, often with fruit, to feed her family and preserve what little coolness they had in their house.

Photo taken by my friend Eric Barr of King

I remember working in tobacco on these kinds of days–the sheer exhaustion that would result after hours of pouring sweat like running faucets while suckering or topping the ‘baccer. Mable told me that on such days, her older relatives would pick oak leaves and layer them inside of their hats to provide further insulation from the heat. Once the day’s work was complete, they would sit out under the shade trees in the yard.

Photo taken by my friend Michael Mullins of King

Nora, too, recalled that everyone simply hunted for whatever shade they could find. That might explain why most old homeplaces have stately trees in the yard–unlike these suburban wasteland lawns with merely grass. Indeed my most vivid memories of Grandpa and Grandma Bray involve them sitting out under the massive oaks, shelling peas, shucking corn, talking to neighbors. Sometimes, they even sat out there after the blessed darkness dropped a veil of relief over the heat-oppressed land.

Back in the day, not only yards were different due to heat, but also houses which were sometimes built differently. Nora remembers reading and/or hearing how very old houses often had a hallway running through the middle of them, from the front door to the back. This would ensure that, with both doors open, a draft would pull moving air from front to back to provide a natural AC system for our ancestors.

On stiflingly hot days now, I notice that, as a rule, houses are shut up tightly with all windows and doors closed. We wouldn’t have seen this 50 years ago. Windows and doors were thrown wide open on hot summer days to allow for a current of air. Shutting up a house in those days could mean certain misery, and even danger, for indoor inhabitants.

Some still walk those old paths today. My neighbors Steve and Olivia Shelton of Danbury live in an older home that they have remodeled and which has no central AC. An attic fan and ceiling fans help to keep the rooms cool, while a gazebo graces their lawn to provide a more comfortable place to spend summer evenings.

Still, Olivia says, there are summer days when she has to take a fan even to the gazebo.

Photo taken by my friend Peggy Woody of McLeansville

We’re talking electric fans–not those funeral home fans that we used during summer church services when I was a youngster. Nora recalls making her own accordion-pleated fans out of paper when all else failed–anything to get the air moving when the heat was on. But the problem with all of these manually-operated fans was that it took energy to wave them back and forth–energy which created more body heat and sweat.

“Can somebody please turn off the heat?” you plead.

Perhaps I’ll remind you of our complaints when December’s cold is bold, January’s gales assail and February’s chill is shrill.

Photo taken by my friend Denise Coe of Walnut Cove

For now, I’m going to enjoy the sizzle from inside my somewhat air-conditioned house, wishing I was shucking corn under the old oak trees with Grandma Bray once more. . .when the heat is on.