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     For those of you who might think that the sun is going to cook all of us one of these days, because it is getting hotter and hotter every summer, take a look at Tom Emery’s article on the front page of this week’s Decatur Tribune which states the hottest day on record in Illinois was on July 14, 1954. “when the mercury topped out at a searing 117 degrees in East St. Louis.”
     That was 71 years ago this month!
     I can also remember a few Decatur Celebrations years ago when the sun beating off of the asphalt downtown made it over 100 degrees — because the temperature on some of those days was 100 degrees before someone created the “feels like” temperature!
     I remember one Decatur Celebration, when our newspaper was located on the northwest corner of Franklin and Main streets, when it was so hot that the “racing rats” involved in that popular act, had to be brought into the air-conditioned lobby of our building because they had overheated! (Fortunately, they were in cages when they were in our lobby.)
     I know that I probably seem like an “oldtimer” in writing this but, when I was a youngster living with my parents we never had air conditioning anywhere!
     There was no air conditioning in the home, at school, the church we attended, the cars we rode in, or drove, or the restaurants when we did eat out on rare occasions.
     When people talk about the “good old days”, that’s one part of the “good old days” that I don’t miss — because summer was hot everywhere back then and there was no escaping it.
     Today, when it gets real hot, I remember those days and am thankful that we now have more ways to beat the heat available to all of us — even cooling centers.

     • I APPRECIATE all of the weather reports that we receive and the advice given on how to deal with heat, cold, ice, tornadoes, etc.
     I do sometimes wonder if television news/weather reports on hot weather, with all of the red, yellow and other colors on the map, would be as intimidating if we still had black and white television sets?
I don’t remember Loren Boatman’s weather forecasts on WTVP (forerunner of WAND) in Decatur being so “concerning” when the map was in black and white.

     When Loren was giving the weather forecast on WTVP in 1959, I was in high school and mom and dad’s house never had any air conditioning — and we never thought about “not surviving” summer heat, regardless of how hot it got!
I believe our broadcast media perform a valuable service in alerting us to threatening weather conditions, but sometimes I think living in 2025, many people aren’t as tough as we once were before air conditioning became so common.
     I always expect it to be hot in the “heat of summer” or cold in the midst of winter, so it comes as no surprise when that happens.
     As I mentioned, I believe our broadcast weather people perform a valuable and, sometimes life-saving, service through making us aware of what weather is impacting us, but I also believe people need to use some common sense in dealing with extreme weather conditions. (I realize that “common sense” seems to be in short supply these days.)

     • FOR THOSE of us who worked on the farm when we were young, one of the hottest places I ever experienced was in the hayloft of barns loading bales of hay and straw from conveyors transporting the bales from rack wagon to the hayloft opening.
     Man, was it hot up there with very little air circulation! I know some of my readers experienced the same heat!
I survived, but it was usually really hot and I preferred to work, when I could, on the rack wagons in the fields loading the bales where there was some air.
     Maybe, the only place hotter was when I helped unload 100 pounds of fertilizer from a boxcar in the Decatur railyards to a truck bed in 100 degree heat.
     I remember getting sick at my stomach from the overpowering heat inside that boxcar.
     Of course, everytime I tell this story, it seems like it was hotter. Maybe it was 200 degrees inside that box car! (Okay, I’m exaggerating a little.)
     Thankfully, I survived those hot days of summer . I’m sure most of you reading this column have experienced similar heat-related issues in your life-time.

     • ANOTHER heat-related story comes from seeing some advice the other evening on a national tv news program that suggested people put ice cubes in a pan or bucket and then put their feet (without shoes and socks I assume) in the water to cool off.
     I remember my mother relating to me a story about when she was a young woman and the temperature was so hot (no fans or air conditioning) that she put ice cubes in a bucket and put her feet in it to keep cool — and then fell asleep.
She said that, when she awakened, she had the worst sore throat she ever had in her life!

     • MY DAD told me that, on the day I was born, Aug. 11th, it was the hottest day of the summer and he had the worse headache he ever had. (I assume he meant the headache was from the heat and not from me being born.)

     • WHILE driving home from the office one evening last week, I forgot that the right lane of Route 51, just south of Lake Decatur, was closed due to some road repair work.
     I was driving in the right lane and, with a lot of traffic in the left lane, I knew that I would have to wait awhile to move into the left lane and drive past where the right lane was closed and blocking traffic.
So, as I waited for all of the cars (the traffic was hea-vy) to pass, something happened that made my day.
     I looked in my rear view mirror and a huge truck in the left lane had stopped in order to allow me to pull into the his lane.
     I waved a “thank you” to the driver and pulled into the left lane and continued on my way.
     A little further down the road I looked to see what name was on the truck because I really appreciated the gesture of the driver.
     The name “Schmidt” was on the truck and it apparently belonged to a firm involved in meat preparation and/or equipment.
     I know that I complain a lot in this column about all of the crazy driving I see on the road each day, but I want to express my thanks to the driver of the “Schmidt” truck for the courtesy he showed to a fellow driver.
     Of all the vehicles that passed me without letting me in their lane, probably the most inconvenient one to stop and start again, was the big “Schmidt” truck because of its size — but the driver of that truck extended that courtesy to this fellow driver — and he made my day!!!!
     Thank you!

     • EULA Stutes Snow passed away on May 30 at the age of 87 and there was a graveside service for her this past Saturday. (Her obituary was in a recent edition of the Tribune.)
     Eula worked as a legal secretary for a downtown law firm when I was starting this business in the 1960s and she was one of the people who gave me legal documents to print that helped my business survive. It seems like only yesterday that      I was stopping by that law office to pick up those stencils.
     What a sweet person she was and someone whose support really helped in those tough early days after starting this business.

     • I JOIN Brian Byers on WSOY’s Byers & Co. every Thursday morning at 7:00 for the “City Hall Insider”— something we have been doing for the past 22 years.

     • HAVE a special, safe July 4th holiday weekend.
     Celebrate our nation’s independence and pray that we will be able to keep it.

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