Hot Town, Summer in Modesto

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head

But at night it's a different world
Go out and find a girl
Come-on come-on and dance all night
Despite the heat it'll be alright

Summer in Modesto. Bare, bright cool mornings already simmering with potential heat. Tempers rising with the temperature through the day. My sister and I, newly relocated from the more temperate Salinas valley, would crawl, sweating, from our beds in the middle of the night and awaken in the bathtub, or on the cool linoleum, during the weeks-long, triple-digit heatwaves. I remember opening the refrigerator, half asleep, looking for something to cool me down, and finding a giant open can of pineapple-orange juice and guzzling it straight from the can, sweet, metallic juice running down the sides of my neck. I also remember falling asleep, limp and sweaty, holding a glass of ice water or juice on my chest and being awakened by the shock of cold liquid spilling into my ears when I nodded off and my grasp relaxed.

This was Modesto, and this was the 70s, the height of the energy crisis and a drought. Air-conditioner use was severely restricted by my dad. This meant no air-conditioning at night, or during the day when no one was home. Except someone, meaning me, did get home at 3:00, at least an hour before my dad got home and the automatic timer turned the air on, so sometimes the house was positively sweltering. We were reprimanded many times when Dad got home and the air was still on 70. (Because if you turn it down really low it gets cold faster, right?) Our elderly neighbors, Ray and Vi, kept their house so cool, all the time, that the neighborhood kids would look for excuses to go and visit them, even if it ended up being standing in the doorway for just a minute, feeling the cool air rush past.

We spent a lot of time on the lawn on the shady side of the house when it was put in, drinking gigantic cups of iced tea or diet coke (it's no wonder I can't have caffeine any more!) But as the sun began to go down in the evening, and bedtimes no longer applied (9 o'clock for as long as I can remember) relief began to filter through the air.

Running through the sprinklers was a neighborhood affair. (Because you should only use the sprinklers at night or in the early morning, to thwart excess evaporation.) We kids would run through any sprinklers that belonged to our immediate neighbors, and then maybe take a lap around the block, dodging prickly black crickets flooded out of their hiding places, sidewalks still warm from the day's sun. Sometimes we'd freeze our t-shirts wet and later creak them open and use them to cool the backs of our necks. I think we also froze someone's bra, maybe all of our bras, after a sprinkler session at a slumber party.

At school, air-conditioned to the point of being chilly, recess was a matter of navigating scalding blacktop, rubber mats and hot metal bars. There wasn't really any shade on the playground. All-important was timing your rush to the eight-spigot drinking fountain just before the lines formed, waiting for your turn at the mountain-cold water, and drinking as much as you could, sometimes until your head hurt, or until the yelling started to escalate behind you. If you got the timing wrong, you were ushered back into class clammy and parched. I had a special strategy of carefully folding a brown paper towel from the bathroom into a one-inch-wide strip, wetting it, and placing it behind my collar band, under the collar itself, to keep myself cool.

Sometimes on the weekends or in summer, we'd walk from our house to the local school's pool, barefoot, learning over the course of the first week of summer to bear the heat of the sidewalks themselves, but dashing across the hot asphalt or walking on the white stripes of the crosswalk to cross. The pool was designed for therapy in the school's programs for disabled children, and it was therefore covered and slightly warm at all times. The relief it provided from the heat was more from the diversion it provided, and the relative coolness of walking back home in a state of evaporation.

When I was around 11 or 12, a little girl named Rhonda who lived a few blocks away invited me to come swim in her pool. Almost no one in my neighborhood had a pool. In the next development, the houses were slightly larger, the yards slightly more accommodating, and that's where Rhonda lived. We spent our time mostly in the shallow end, submerged to our waists, replaying songs from Grease over and over on a little tape-recorder at the side of the pool and making up dance routines, copying the movie choreography of Summer Lovin' or Greased Lightnin'. (Did any of those songs not end with n'?) Neither of us was destined to be a cheerleader or a dancer, but oh, those afternoons were bliss. (oh!...those su-u-mmer ni-iiiights...) I still don't remember why they ended, but they eventually did.

In high school, we could finally get out on our own in the evenings, and I still remember how wonderful it was to be able to be out at night, sleeveless, sitting on a park swing or driving with the windows down, the smell of warm peaches in the air, freedom and limitless potential all within our grasp like fruit on a tree.

And babe, don't you know it's a pity
That the days can't be like the nights
In the summer, in the city
In the summer, in the city

More summer here.