Dormant

Dormant Driven Drought

If this oppressive heat wave continues, Everything will go dormant. All the agriculture crops, even trees are suffering from the Heat and lack of moisture. It is even affecting old coots like me. I have been going dormant rocking back and forth in my chair trying to stay cool. I drink liquids to the point, I could ring  out  my clothes every night. Eight glasses, plus a gallon or two.

Triple-digit temperatures with humidity levels that almost matches the Temps makes it life threatening for many plants and animals. This is nothing new. I recall hot winds blowing as a youngster. Hot strong southerly winds blowing day and night withered plants to the point they they went dormant and didn’t produce hardly anything.

I recall the old two-story farmhouse, the young folks slept upstairs where the temperature must have been around a hundred or more during the day and cooled down very little at night. You would lay in bed sweating, listening to the wind eerily whistling through the window screens, playing music for you, but not to put you to sleep, to remind you another day was coming with the same kind of temperatures. You might even be able to stack hay tomorrow, it surely will be a good day for hay to dry and put into a stack.

My Grandfather had an Old Red Wing  Brown Jug. It must have held about a gallon of water, no doubt a gallon of moonshine once or twice since it left Red Wing, Minnesota. It had a big old cork in the top, He would wrap that Brown Jug in a burlap bag and soak it down with water real good. That old jug kept water nice and cool enough to drink for a half a day out in the blazing sun. Oh what a treat to drink that cool water out in the field. If you were shocking grain it was good to remember what shock the jug was under.

Many farms had no running water back in the early days, the water came from a well that supplied the livestock and everything else on the farm that needed to drink water. There was usually a windmill that pumped the water from the well and then it ran into a water tank where the cattle could all get a drink. Many kids had a quick swim, when no body was watching. Some farms had a cooler that the well water ran through first before it got to the main water tank, These coolers were Oak tubs about four feet high and four feet wide, you could put cream cans in to keep them nice and cool or keep your milk in there, then carry it to the house at Meal Time. Sometimes beer found its way into the old cooler. This was in the days before propane refrigerators.

I recall at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, Grandpa chewed Copenhagen and after Grandpa took a drink of water there was an ever-so-slight taste of Copenhagen still on the dipper, that didn’t seem to bother us boys any.

Somebody would have the job at the end of a hot day to take the water bucket from the house and walk out to that well and fill the water pail and bring it back to the pantry, everyone drank from the same Dipper and the cold water was a very popular thing as soon as a fresh pail arrived at the house. If Kool-Aid was going to be made it was usually made with that water that was just brought in from the well.

I recall at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, Grandpa chewed Copenhagen and after Grandpa took a drink of water there was an ever-so-slight Taste of Copenhagen still on the dipper, but that didn’t seem to bother us boys any.

Looking back at the way we lived 70 years ago people will think we had a rather dormant lifestyle. I wouldn’t call it dormant, as a matter of fact I’m quite proud to have lived in that era. We were a little more laid back maybe, things were done at a slower pace but everyone appreciated each other and had time for one another.

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