by Lara Baird

Created on: November 27, 2010

Anyone who has ever lived in the deep south knows how absolutely hot and miserable it gets here in the spring and summer. The air is so thick and humid you can slice it up and serve it for tea.  When I was a kid we didn't have air conditioners, or ceiling fans, and televison sets only had three or four channels.  Children were shoved out the door early in the morning and allowed in at dinner time to pass the hottest part of the day in the house. I lived with my beloved grandmother who did her best to make life entertaining for all.  Lunch was usually a bologna sandwich, but it was a special sandwich.  She would actually make holes for eyes and a nose in the bologna, cut our a mouth and let us kids decorate the bologna face with mustard.  We gave those sandwiches moustaches, ears, eyebrows, eye lashes, you name it.  It wasn't until I got grown that I realized that grandma was actually swiping bites of our sandwiches. I still fix my little boy's bologna sandwiches like this today.

Night time brought some cool air, but not much.  I remember tossing and turning and trying to cool off enough to sleep.  We had a couple of box fans and a window fan to draw air into the house, but I don't remember it helping much.  I just remember being hot.  There was a hope chest in my bedroom. I set a box fan there pointed toward the bed in hopes of getting some cool air.  I was laying there on top of the sheets listening to the cicadas and the crickets singing their songs when I picked up a sound I didn't usually hear at night.  Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick.  I lay there a few more minutes listening and it seemed like it was coming from that fan on the chest.  I didn't bother turning the light on, I just got up and peered through the grill of the fan and there was a great big fat black cord thing that should not have been on that fan. Well, it was time to turn on the light.  We had pull strings in those days, and darned if I couldn't find it in the dark.  I tripped on my shoes that were in the floor, fell flat on my face,and got a busted lip for my trouble.  I managed to get back up and grasp around in the dark and find the light string.  That fan was still going tick, tick, tick.  I tiptoed over to that fan and looked through the grill again.  That big black thing was still there.  Cautiously I gently moved the fan to the floor.  There laying on that hope chest was the

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