I’ve spent the past few weeks poking good-natured fun at my grandfather for his creatively salty responses to hot weather.
(I mean, really: “Blisterbitcher” is a masterpiece of improvisatory profanity. Even the East German judge gave it a 9.9.)
Still, my grandpa had at least one good reason to dislike extreme summer heat. So, in fairness to him, I thought I’d devote this week’s entry to telling (cue Paul Harvey voice) “… the rest of the story.”
My grandparents’ old house at 1107 Hope St. in Stamford, Connecticut, has shown up a couple times on this blog, almost as a supporting character. It’s time we took another look at it:
Circa 1973
The house dated to the early years of the 20th century. It was a simple, modest home — three rooms up, three rooms down, a bath-and-a-half, a finished attic and an unfinished basement. Also a shared driveway, a nice wraparound porch from which one could watch fire trucks hustling down Hope Street, and a surprisingly large (in retrospect) back yard.
For all its familiar, familial appeal, 1107 Hope lacked some of the creature comforts that are common in more recent homes. And chief among them — at least in July and August — was air conditioning.
Which led to situations like the one in this week’s calendar entry:
August 3-4, 1975: "90 degrees inside house."
On those days (or weeks) when the air stilled to a thick, muggy halt and no breeze offered respite, my grandparents and great-grandmother had no alternative but to fire up a floor fan, pour themselves a cold Seven-Up and wait for nightfall or a thunderstorm. 90 degrees inside the house? I wouldn’t have liked that very much either, I don’t imagine.
Even if my grandparents had wanted A/C — and maybe they did — they would have had to invest in their electrical service first.
In the early ’80s, my dad installed a ceiling fan in the first-floor family/TV room. My grandparents then discovered that they couldn’t run the ceiling fan and the toaster at the same time, due to the limitations of their antiquated wiring.
(The wiring in the condo that currently occupies 1107 Hope Street can probably handle two flat-screen TVs, a dishwasher and a blender full of margaritas without so much as a flicker. Normally, when I invoke the present, I sneer a little bit; but not this time.)
So, for all my jokes about blisterbitchers, I wouldn’t have wanted to face a weeklong heat wave in 1107 Hope Street any more than I would want to face a tsunami in a 22-foot fishing boat. Lends a little perspective to my grandfather’s comments, anyway.
As a side note, I had no idea there was a “Coast Guard Day.” According to Wiki, the predecessor agency to the Coast Guard was founded on Aug. 4, 1790.
Among other things I learned from Wiki, this sentence is part of the Creed of the Coast Guardsman: “I shall live joyously, but always with due regard for the rights and privileges of others.” What other service agency sets an explicit priority on living joyously?
Sure seems like my grandparents were joyous on Coast Guard Day, 1975, when the rain brought the temperature down 20 degrees and made their home livable again.
As a special reward to you, the faithful reader, there will be a bonus post tomorrow. Or maybe it’s a punishment. You decide.
Hope Street 
I always used to say that if I had to join any type of military service it would be the coast guard. Now I know why.
Another thing I learned from Wiki, a while ago, is that there is such a thing as the Coast Guard Reserve.
Makes sense — if the Army, Navy, etc. have reserves, why not the Coast Guard? — but I don’t think I’d ever heard of it before.
The leaders of the Coast Guard probably heaved a collected sigh of relief when the Village People released “In The Navy,” since they could just as easily have called it “In The Coast Guard.”
Kurt:
Yes, the wiring in 1107 was extremely antiquated. The total service to the house was 40 amps at most; there were only two circuits, either 20 amps each or maybe even 15 amps each. Most new houses today are around 200 amps! And some of the in-the-wall wiring was so old it was two separate wires separated by those white porcelain things. At the time the occupants moved to Rochester in 1985 your grandfather was having a hard time getting insurance for it!
Correction, I think: Your memory is better than mine, but I don’t recall having anything to do with the ceiling fan installation. Perhaps I did some of the heavy lifting, but not much else. In typical Drawing Boy fashion, he filled a coffee can with cement and hung it where the fan was to go for several weeks to make sure the ceiling joists could handle the weight of a fan, before he actually installed the fan.
We’ve had some blisterbitchin’ days this summer. Your blog just makes me start sweating! Have you considered that your avid readers might appreciate Pop’s reports of snow and ice during these summer months and the fireballers during the winter?
RB
I stand corrected on the ceiling fan. Somehow I got it into my head that you did the job, but I am known to be wrong from time to time.
A picture of the hanging coffee can is in the family archives someplace — I’ve seen it.
Good idea on the reverse-seasonal posting. I had not been so creative as to think of that, but I’ll have to file it away and remember it.
I am soo into your weather-related posts. I think I inherited your grandfather’s obsession with the weather. Kara laughs at me for watching the weather station regularly, and now I check the on line weather station blow-by-blow predictions.
The icons they use for daily predictions resemble what your grandfather used to draw in his calendar boxes! However, nobody has captured the wavy lines of the heat quite like he did.
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