Where do you live, Mephisto? Right on the Pacific, or somewhat inland? I lived right on the beach on an island outside of Seattle, and when it got hot, it was only crispy for a couple of days, even in summer, before the rains came and made the situation worse by adding humidity, but dropping the temperature to barely bearable after the thunder and lightning show ended.
I used to cool down by securing my little girl snugly in her car seat, firing up the old roadster and zooming around the little island roads going quite fast, with all the windows down and something very silly on the tape deck. Stevie Nicks' album, "The Wild Heart" was my favorite then, and probably now, too. Old men at the ferry docks would tell me to turn it down, but I was much younger and more inconsiderate then.
After zooming around the whole island, looking at llamas, ostriches, and lambs gamboling through the meadows, and stopping to pick blackberries and wildflowers (I led a very CLICHED life then, I am afraid!), we would stop in town and have chocolate dipped frosty cones at the local Dairy Queen. There is nothing like these in San Francisco, and I miss them sadly, my mouth remembering the milky coolness and the slightly resistant yummy crunch of the hard chocolate coating as I bit down. I never felt hot after I ate one, no matter what the weather, and so we would drive home as the sun set and a nice breeze came up over our beach.
There was no need for security--the island could be accessed only by boat--and so it was safe to throw open all the windows and doors and luxuriate in the salty brisk refreshment blowing in over the Pacific, as 150-year-old geoduck clams blew air bubbles through the sand surface looking like little geysers, and I tried to imagine the Indians who lived there hunting and gathering for thousands of years, swimming and bathing in the warm harbor water and mating in the forest behind my little beach cottage. |
