Another hot and humid day and I find myself holed up in my house with the windows shut, fans going, and the single window air conditioner running at top speed. It is still hot and humid. It is worse outside, though. No fishing, no gardening, no walking. It might as well be winter.

I don't recall many days like this when I was young. Maybe it just didn't bother me as much when I was a kid. Our house was so super cool all summer because of the trees around it, that had air conditioning been available, we wouldn't have needed it. I do recall my grandparents taking a galvanized wash tub outside and filling it with water for us to sit in to cool off. That was a treat, as was running through their lawn sprinkler spray.

When I was a young mother, we would all pile into the car and go for a long ride to cool off. These were the sixties, and our car didn't have air conditioning, but with the windows all down, the breeze felt great. Gasoline wasn't an issue yet, and it didn't take much money to fill the tank. In the sixties, I had three children, and there was always a battle over who sat in the window seats and who got stuck in the middle. Sometimes we would go to KMart and walk around inside because it was air conditioned. At home, I would sometimes turn on the garden hose and let the kids cool off in the water spray. Once in a while, we would go to Girty or Rearic's Fording and wade or swim in Crooked Creek.

I can say this for certain: the best times of my life were the years when I had all my children still at home. There was a lot of work -- huge amounts of laundry, ironing, cleaning, cooking and baking -- but there were hugs and kisses and laughter and the beautiful faces of my babies. I miss that.