Someone says, “It sure is hot and dry!” And someone else says, “Well, just how hot and dry is it?” I heard a story the other day that said it is so hot and dry that the water moccasins are getting ticks on their backs. At the Historical Society meeting the other day, Bob Prophet passed on to me a story off the Internet that said it is so hot and dry in Kansas that the Baptists are starting to baptize by sprinkling, the Methodists have begun using wet wipes, the Presbyterians are handing out rain checks, and the Catholics are praying for the wine to turn back into water!

Yes, it sure is hot and dry! I get in my car or pickup to go somewhere, and my steering wheel is too hot to touch. I’m tempted to put on my winter gloves to drive. I’m pretty sure that my driveway would fry an egg. There is no shade over it, and it just sits there soaking up the heat of the sun. I was just getting ready to lay by my lawn for the season, supposing that the grass won’t be growing any more. But yesterday my neighbor started watering his lawn. I do hate to have a brown lawn beside his green one. Isn’t it funny how we water our lawns so the grass will grow so we can cut it down. I also discovered that some varieties of grasses in my lawn are drying up and dying away, while others are growing a foot tall. Go figure!

This year puts me in mind of 1953. We built our new house on the farm during that long, hot, dry summer. Otter Creek went dry, and we had to haul water for the cows from the spring on the Charles Day place north of us. Those cows could drink water faster than I could dip it for them. I was amazed at how much water acow drinks in a day. They are water barrels on four feet. Of course, if they are going to give milk, they have to have water. We had to take in lots of water ourselves, to keep going. Thankfully, our water well there at the house kept hanging in there, producing its slow little stream of cool, cool water. What our well lacked in quantity, it made up in quality. I don’t believe any water anywhere is more refreshing when you come in from the field or finish farm chores than a good cool dipper of water from our well.

Even after Dad and Johnnie moved to Slack Street in town, Dad always carried home jugs of water from the farm well for drinking. It wouldn’t have helped the Ozarka water people to discover our well, though. If they had started pumping from it, they would have drawn it dry before they got 10 gallons.

These days, so many of our roads are paved that we no longer get a taste of the old days of dry, hot summertimes. Back then, when you set out north on the road to Jacket, Mo., or set out east toward old Leetown, you raised a hefty cloud of dust as you drove. Dust settled everywhere on everything: on your car, on the road, in your eyes, on the tree leaves along the road, even hanging to the leaves of the weeds beside the way. It seemed that everything had a coat of dust.

Sometimes the road itself would be covered with twoor three inches of fine dust.

If you walked in it with bare feet, it would flow like liquid between your toes, and it was often hot enough to bake the bottoms of your feet.

I marvel a bit as I drive the little stretch of Hayden Road leading north from Pea Ridge High School. Today the street is paved and houses with well-kept lawns are situated all along the way. But I’m remembering when that stretch was the epitome of the pitiful picture of growing things struggling through a hot, dry summer. Back then there were no houses along there, and the fence rows were grown up with sassafras saplings, poison ivy, ragweed and sumac thickets, all of it thirsty for rain and drooping low and brown from the weight of accumulated road dust.

Back in June this year, when the weather turned hot, our air conditioning unit went on the fritz and breathed its last. We thought we were about to die through that week as we waited for the new air conditioner. But, it is easy to remember when nobody had air conditioning.

Air conditioners were extreme luxuries which started showing up in the nicer motels and movie theaters in the late 1940s. We never had an air conditioner ourselves as long as I lived on the farm. I think we first got a window air conditioner when Nancy and I moved to Morrilton in 1962.

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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at joe369@ centurytel.net, or call 621-1621.

Community, Pages 5 on 08/10/2011