What We do When it’s Hot

So far I’ve told you, faithful reader, what we do here when it rains.  Today I will inform you about what we do when its hot in Maine, or HIM for short. First of all a definition of what exactly qualifies as hot. Yesterday’s high temperature in Searsmont was 89. While depending on where you live and humidity levels this might not seem particularly severe as hot goes. There have been many summers in Short Pump where any day not in the 90’s would seem pleasant by comparison. Not here. In Maine high 80’s qualifies as brutal heat for one simple reason—the absence of air conditioning. Take last night for example.

By the time dinner time rolled around Pam had already fled the premises to Belfast for an iced coffee and AC time at Reny’s. Heat is my wife’s mortal enemy, the bane of her existence. It is the only force in the universe capable of turning her to the dark side. She got out of the shower yesterday afternoon and immediately found herself covered in sweat. I knew she wasn’t long for the cabin. Her two hours reading and drinking iced coffee lounging in the soft seating inside Dunkin worked wonders for her psyche. She returned to the lake her delightfully reliable self. 

At this point I knew that there was no way she was going to cook anything that required her to turn on the stove. I wisely volunteered to head over to Fraternity General to pick up one of their fabulous pizzas. Since it was near six o’clock I know from experience that you need to call first, then allow thirty minutes before making the 3 mile drive to pick it up. I called again and again for ten minutes and the line was busy every time. Throwing caution to the wind, I drove there without ordering first. Upon arrival I noticed a sign on the door:  Due to extreme heat, the kitchen is closed to anything that requires an oven. Cold sandwiches available.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking…Oh, thats adorable! Poor Mainers can’t even handle a couple of warm days!! Nothing could be further from the truth. Fraternity General is a 100+ year old colonial structure built without air conditioning. The kitchen sits in a windowless, low ceiling section of the first floor. It is roughly 10x12 and has two pizza ovens and one regular oven. The girls take your order at the counter. When I walked in the place last night it was 85 or so outside with a lovely breeze that had come up. But inside that store it had to be 100. The two cooks had bright red faces covered in sweat. I noticed on the glass covered turn table a piping hot pepperoni pizza that looked of relatively recent origin. “Can I have five pieces of this one?” I asked. I walked out with the last pizza of the day, feeling like the great white hunter.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Pam had lowered the blinds across the front of the house to shade the interior of the cabin from the bright reflection of the setting sun now blinding us from the surface of the lake. But now the wind had picked up nicely and she had turned on every ceiling fan available and had the floor fan on the maximum speed. It sounded like the tarmac at LaGuardia but it was cooler. The hardest part of a HIM day are the hours between 5 and 9.

The rest of our HIM day was spent on the water. I fished, kayaked, and floated around on the float. Pam spent lots of time escorting Lucy around the lake on her paddle board. I swam…a lot. It was delightful. Today, the weather people are unanimous in their opinion that another scorcha is in the works. High temperature of 87 with a 40% chance of thunder storms late in the day. After that it looks like we will be in the 70’s for the next four days.