BY JOHN COSCETTE
Special to the Elmore/Autauga News
The Dog Days of summer. I never really knew what that meant until I did some research. To explain it simply is to say that it has to do with the star Sirius, also known as the “Dog Star, and that it is a hot time of the year. The Romans would sacrifice a brown dog at the beginning of the Dog Days to appease the rage of Sirius. I guess they had to blame somebody.
Most people try to keep cool during the hot months of summer and it seems that everyone has their own ways to deal with the heat. Some people just avoid the sun altogether and stay inside their homes especially if they have air conditioning. There are some guys that will say “An ice-cold beer works wonders!” in reference to keeping themselves cool. Others will jump in the ocean, lakes, rivers, and streams to keep their body temperature down. I call those people Summer Fish and they will use any body of water, including the bathtub, to wet their gills.
What happens when it is so hot and muggy at night and you are hoping to get some sleep without the sweat rolling into your ears? Most of us believe the best way to combat the high temperature is by circulating the air with some sort of fan. You can pick up a cheap fan at a department store for about ten bucks. You can buy one with the multiple speeds, one that oscillates back and forth, or even one that will attach to your ceiling. As a child, living in a “third world” home, we had a box fan.
My parents had purchased a new fan for their room and we managed to get their old box fan. A box fan is named aptly because it will fit into the “box” of an open window. Large and square, this used box fan was prehistoric. It was made of a heavy-duty metal frame with what looked like chain link fencing as a screen. Behind the screen was a set of formidable steel blades that cut into the air with ease. This box fan obtained its power from a cloth covered electrical wire and when you plugged it into the outlet, you took a chance of cooling off or electrocuting yourself.
The metal monster of a fan was like the Titanic as it would start off slow and then become powerful enough to suck in any bird that might have flown too close. It might have been made from some of the scrap iron used in building that famous luxury liner, now that I’m thinking of it.
Two of the blades were bent out of alignment so they would scrape the frame with a rhythmic tune. My brothers and I would always try to sharpen sticks on the fan blades because a spear was always something handy to have as a little boy. We also wanted to use that fan as the propeller for a boat… thankfully we grew up in time as to never to experiment with that idea.
As I said, that fan was large and cumbersome and actually did nothing for the heat. The only way you could feel cool air coming out of that box was to hold your face right up to it. The name of the fan, which I don’t exactly remember, was something like Iceberg or Eskimo. A name that would bring to mind a frigid, frosty hurricane of a breeze. Talk about false advertisement! The best thing to do would be to spend your time yelling into the fan and listen to how the blades would distort your voice. Eventually the spinning blades would sing you to sleep and you wouldn’t mind the sweat rolling down the side of your face.
Ah, the Dog Days of summer! They bring to mind the thoughts of the Ice Cream Man, running through a lawn sprinkler, the belly flop into a pool, or just standing in front of an open refrigerator. With these days of the temperature going into the triple digits, I look at my brown Chihuahua.
I guess I couldn’t do that, but I might start yelling into a box fan.
John Coscette is a native New Yorker now living in the south. He arrived in Prattville with his family around 15 years ago and has taken that time to keep up his skills in Italian cooking, but also learn some of the rich culture of the South, including the food. His stories of growing up, and his take on life in general, are genuine and heart felt. We will be sharing his columns from time to time, and believe you will truly enjoy them. We welcome reader’s submissions! You can email them to Sarah Stephens at [email protected].
