summer.

ways of staying cool during the summer in cobden when i was a child:

• a peach orchard or a cold peach; 
• a quick bike ride down a steep hill (at your own peril, as the hills were gravel); 
• a dog paddle in crab orchard lake; 
• loitering in draper’s grocery (until your babysitter tells you the cashier lost his finger in a satanic, bloodletting ritual and his religious beliefs are why he always stares at you angrily when you come in the store pretending to concentrate on the candies for thirty minutes straight); 
• eating the neighbors’ log of frozen cookie dough (at your own peril, because someone has always been there before you and it’s been sitting out too long); 
• a dip in the pool at the apartment complex we live in, where my mom was responsible for maintaining the chlorine levels and one night went to turn the hose off and saw a man peeping into her bedroom window, where she’d been minutes before;
• standing in the part of the lawn where the soil is soft and cold and we’re convinced there is a dead body buried there and know for a fact that there are two parakeets (named “peewee” and “herman”; peewee ate herman’s eyes, and i learned about death at 7 am one morning, age eight) in orange juice concentrate containers besides two dead rabbits (named “jack” and “diane”, heartland rabbits) in grocery bags buried two feet in the soil.

see also: http://uiwpdemo.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/ways-to-stay-cool-in-the-summer-in-iron-mountain-mi/