by Mark Buckley
Through My Eyes
Mark Twain is attributed as saying, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” I hear people talk about how hot this summer has been, and it used to be cooler when they were younger. This is not necessarily true. I remember a summer in 1980 that was a scorcher.
You see, 1980 was the hottest summer of my 75 years. When I say it was hot, it was blazing. From June 5 to Sept. 22, we recorded 41 days over 100° and 55 days of 90° or greater. It was so hot that the streets buckled. As I remember, 17th and K-61 was impassable for a time because of a large street buckle (this is back when 17th was only two lanes). Not only was it hot, but it was dry—we only received below normal rain during those 104 days.
Times were different then. About half of the homes in my neighborhood did not have air conditioning. Floor fans were what kept us cool. We did not have water parks, but we did have the Fairgrounds, Carey Park and Rice Park pools. I remember the unkempt yards in the neighborhood because it was too hot to work outside. Our usual finely kept grass turned brown, and it was so hard that the bottoms of your feet would bruise when you walked barefoot. Because of the extreme heat, there was very little shade as the trees lost most of their leaves due to heat stress. The good thing was it was so dry and hot that the mosquitoes wouldn’t even come out, but the flies were another matter.
I was a teacher back then, and that summer I was at Emporia State finishing my master’s degree. I was one of the lucky ones who were able to work in air conditioning. My wife and daughter were not as lucky. They were without AC for over a month. Our window unit broke down, and we were waiting for it to be repaired. ALCO had above-ground pools on sale that summer. Glenn Shoemaker saved us a 12’ wide, 36” deep pool, because they sold out as fast as they came in. My wife and daughter spent most of their days floating and playing in it. When the water got too warm, they would go to Dillions and purchase bags of ice to cool it down.
When I came home on weekends, the three of us would spend evenings sitting on our front porch (it faced east) with a box fan blowing on us, drinking iced tea or eating ice cream, because you would do anything to stay cool. Some nights we would try to cool off by going on a ride in our ’76 Nova with the windows down (because our car, like most, did not have AC). This was a futile effort as the hot pavement would radiate the day’s heat.
That year, as in past years, we would start school in late August. I taught DECA at Hutchinson High School. School was much different then; we did not have air conditioning, and the thermostat in my room would often reach the high 90s by noon. I was the envy of the school as I owned a commercial fan which I used to “cool” my room. We had what was called the “heat schedule,” when we would start and dismiss school earlier than usual.
The Kansas State Fair was a bear that year. None of the buildings were air-conditioned, and the grass in the parking lots turned to powder and the dust was thick. The benches by the Eisenhower building were full of attendees cooling off. There was a large drinking fountain, and people would fill cups of water or soak a towel to put around their neck to keep cool. And through all this, we survived.
So, when you think it is hot out, think of us who lived through the summer of 1980.
Mark Buckley is the president of Toy Depot. He can be reached at 620-474-6100.