The Heat is On (with a nod to Kenny Loggins)

Every year when it begins getting a little hot, I think back to my days in Napa, when we were growing up without air conditioning, without a pool and how creative we could get with a simple garden hose.  We managed. For the record, in East Contra Costa, where I now live,  the conditions, climate/weather wise are much closer to the Central Valley than the rest of the county, part of which abuts San Francisco Bay.  Think Stockton, not El Cerrito.

The hottest I can remember it being is 109, though  Berryessa was always hotter.  It didn't matter to a little kid, we made do.  First to come off was the shirt.  I had to be very careful while running around sans shirt, because being very fair (Irish, Dutch, Swedish background) I burned very easily.  As long as I was running around, I was pretty safe, but none of this 'let's work on our tan' stuff. 

Next were the long pants.  I learned very early that I really like shorts.  To this day, I have to think hard about the last time I had worn long pants.  (One summer, living in Sacramento, I wore long pants for a total of 18 hours.) I almost always wore a hat while outside.  With the fair skin came fair blue eyes and  if I didn't wear a hat, I would get a terrible headache.  That is the case to this day. 

Silverado Junior High had a pool, as did all the junior high schools at that time.  Once in a while, we would go down there to 'swim', that being a pejorative  term, since I didn't know how to swim.  It was more like 'flailing chaos,' along with 50 or so others.

Then there was the garden hose.  Even if it had sat in the sun for a few hours, the hose would still, after a few minutes, gush cool water at speeds unimaginable to the uniformed general public; it was a kid thing.  We knew what to do and we didn't have to have any stupid rules.  We just squirted each other, until our mother  told us not to do that any longer.  (Most of her days off from Napa State, a staff member, not a patient, were during the week.  A couple times per month, she had a three day weekend.)  In addition to squirting, we made cool mud puddles and sat in them.  More than once, she would have to hose of off just to keep the house fairly dignified in the clean department.

On the adjacent ranchette sat two eucalyptus trees, one standing, one had fallen eons ago (that's a guess).  The standing one provided a lot of shade and we played around its base, using the other tree as a space ship, or pirate ship, or any other ship of which we could think.  It was cool, in more ways than one.

Finally, if we were really lucky, we would get invited for an afternoon at Dwayne Young's place.  He was everybody's best friend: HE HAD A POOL.  No parents, cause nobody was going to sue anyone if someone got hurt or worse.  But I still had to watch the sunburn thing.

Napa was nothing compared to Sacramento, where I resided for 21 years.  It could easily be 104 by 10 o'clock in the morning.  My first apartment had a good, clean well-maintained pool.  I spent some time in the city pools, but generally waited until late in the day, when a lot of the kids were gone.  But I did  have air conditioning, but even then, at about three in the morning, I would have to turn it off because it was too cold.

So the next time your kids, or grandkids complain about it being too hot, tell them that you have a  blog from Napa Patch to read.

Tom Ontis is a Napa ex-patriate now living in East Contra Costa County.  He grew up on a ranchette in the Coombsville area east of Silverado Junior (now Middle) High School.