July 27, 2011:  The Midwest and the Northeast are being whacked by a current heat wave.  I hear it's so hot that outside our nation's capital in Maryland and Virginia farmyard chickens are laying hard-boiled eggs.  Hmmm.

Since I moved to the Treasure Coast of Florida, I have been debunking friends' slanderous statements that the Orange State is oppressive in the summer.  Generally speaking, at least here in Stuart and Jensen Beach, we infrequently exceed the low nineties.  I point out to one friend it's hotter in Virginia Beach where he lives than here.  He now desperately tries to win this debate by using dew point averages tracked over a five-year span.  He claims to keep charts and has befriended on Facebook Fox's Janice Dean "The Weather Machine" as an "insider."  I'll start to get really concerned about his obsession if he shows up wearing stiletto heels and carrying a laser pointer.

Florida gets hot in the summer, no doubt about that.  For the few of you living encased within Carrier central air breezes, let me remind you that Florida is tropical.  That's why we have palm trees and no snow shovels in the garage.

There were some summers back in B'ville that were absolutely frying cruel.  Until my parents joined the Field Club, the search was on for a breeze.  We pre-teens in roving sweat-soaked bands hunted for ways of cooling off.  A few of these methods had consequences.

The Bronx River was a big draw but was always risky.  The muddy and stagnant lake always gave us a false hope of relief.  We would wade in the shallow end pushing aside the drifting tree limbs covered with white froth and attempting to step over every broken beer bottle on the planet in our bare feet.  I always received a tongue lashing on the way to the hospital for the annual summer tetanus shot after cutting a foot or a digit.  Jim "Sarge" Leary ('62) and several adventurous others would actually go swimming in that Big Muddy.

"Burg" Hackenburg ('62) and I discovered by accident that cement tubs, in fact, float.  This opened a whole new dimension to our skill sets:  Yachting!  The new apartments were being built above Alger Court, making cement tubs accessible.  The "Burg" and I would choose very carefully an un-dented larger tub and then hump it down the steep hill to the Big Muddy armed with 2 x 2 scrap wood for paddles.  Our day on the water would begin in earnest.  Of course, one mis-shift of a body part to get comfortable would upset the balance, swamping the gunnels and sending our beloved vessel to Davey Jones.  Both of us vastly improved our swimming talents over that summer.

One very hot day Bob "Bogus" Burt ('63) and I were desperate to find a cool place.  We meandered towards the Hotel Gramatan after loitering for an hour in Bellis over a small Coke.  "Bogus" came up with the idea of sneaking into a bathroom in the hotel where the place was air-conditioned.  So we each pulled up to a stall.  That worked for only a short while until a bellhop caught us.  The rest of the day we stood in front of Topps Bakery; every time the door would open we would get a blast of cold air to the street.

Lastly, the most fun of all was following the Dellwood delivery milk truck.  Frank, the milk man, would park his truck and deliver milk in glass bottles to individual apartments in Alger Court and on Sagamore Road.  The bottles in the rear of the truck always rested in bins among huge chunks of crystal clear ice.  As soon as Frank disappeared into the building we'd start looting ice and would occasionally lift a quart of chocolate milk.  We would suck on the ice and split the bottle of milk, hiding down by the Bronxville Lake like desperadoes, waiting for a milk truck.  Around the time we were twelve it lost its pizzazz.  We discovered girls, and robbing milk trucks didn't impress them.

Today it's a little warm here; I wonder if cement tubs are sea worthy!