Not sure about you but my childhood summers, at least up until I began working on farms and earning some money at around 16 were generally spent trying to stay cool.
Dad worked in a factory during the week and on a chicken farm on weekends to help make ends meet, which was always guaranteed. His pay for working on the farm both days was a chicken and a dozen eggs – no actual money passed hands but at least it was food that could be added to our meagre diet.
Being poor in those days wasn’t particularly unusual given that we lived in a rural community and so grew up knowing the importance of hard work and living on the poverty line.
Still, that’s not what this week’s essay is about.
Our house was made of wood, and in my childhood was already close to 100 years old. Dad told me the story of when he purchased the house in the early 1950’s it had a dirt floor kitchen, with no laundry nor toilet.
We had an outhouse all through my childhood and only had a flush toilet when I reached my teens. Up until then the night cart used to visit our place and take the old, and often overflowing bin used as our toilet each week.
Dad installed the plaster to the inner walls and added a concrete and tile floor to the kitchen and the added new laundry shortly after my second birthday. Now, because it was an old miner’s cottage dating back to the 1860’s it consisted of three small bedrooms, a dining/living room and a front parlour (only to be used for visitors).
In total the entire house including the galley kitchen and laundry at the back of the house was 700 sq feet (65 sq metres) – super tiny for a family of four kids and two adults to share.
As you can imagine there was zero privacy and it was close quarters living at its best.
The roof was made of corrugated iron and so in the summers became so hot you couldn’t touch it as it absorbed the heat which in turn made our home into an oven.
Days when the temperature gauge reached into the low to mid 40C+ (104 F) degrees the inside of the house became just as hot. However, the added heat was from our kitchen wood stove that we needed to keep alight as without it we had no hot water, so this added to the internal heat of the house.
We clearly couldn’t afford air conditioning and never experienced it unless you visited a department store in the nearest regional centre (Ballarat).
“Unbearable” was a word that my sister Glenda and I talked about last week when chatting on the phone about our childhood summers.
There were many sleepless nights during my childhood summers as the temperature gauge remained high inside the house long after the sun had gone down – trapping in the sweltering heat. Enduring little sleep and sweat soaked sheets became the general order of our nights during the summertime.
During the days of our childhood summers, we would retreat to the town’s public pool and for the princely sum of 5 cents you could enter at 10:00 am when the pool opened and leave at 6:00 pm when it closed.
We’d swim all day and after the first sunburn of the year, then of course peel from the sun blistered skin we’d turn brown. In those days we couldn’t afford sunscreen, nor was it top of mind for anyone I knew. We just all got sunburned until our skin could handle the exposure. Generally, burn on top of burn…
No wonder Australia is the skin cancer capital of the world!
Strangely, that is the life we knew and accepted and didn’t ask questions as we really had no points of reference for any other life. We did the best we could and made do.
Perhaps deep down that’s the reason I moved to Canada and lived there for 32 years. Although to be fair, the winters were the opposite, and warmth was what you really needed.
Now, all these years on I can’t fathom a night sleeping without air conditioning especially as we live in a temperate climate here in Australia (on the coast near Brisbane) where the weather fluctuates between 25C – 30C year-round.
Currently, we’re in our wet-season and so it rains quite often but the humidity is high so somewhat reminiscent of my childhood.
After I reached 16, I began working on local farms doing general farm duties. I’d basically follow the same routine and get sunburn on top of sunburn until I could handle working outside without a shirt.
As you can imagine that has left a lasting impression on my body, both in terms of moles having to be taken off due to their pre-cancerous disposition but also a permanent tan line on my upper body.
Although to be honest you can still see my original skin colour on my lily-white butt.
So, with that image I will end today’s essay…
Until next week.
Ciao!
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