Heatwave

by Eleanor Lippmann

1943

I was just a little kid. What did I know about things! All I remember about that day is that it must have been a murderous heat wave in Philadelphia that summer.

My brother Milton and I woke up expecting to get dressed, have breakfast, and go outside to play, just what little kids did all summer long. We expected it to be another typical summer day in Philadelphia. After enough neighborhood kids showed up we could organize games like Rover, Red Rover. If someone had a length of old clothes line rope, we jumped rope until we were bored. With the appearance of a pink rubber ball, we’d move to the wall by the stairs of the apartments at the end of the block, and when that got boring, we’d attach roller skates to our Buster Brown shoes and race around the block on wheels wearing the skate key on a shoelace around our necks. Around lunch time all of the neighborhood kids would disappear into their houses for lunch and reappear later to regroup and find new things to keep us occupied.

On really hot summer days, if Harry Small, the plumber, was around, he’d use his big wrench to open the fire hydrant thereby attracting even more children trying to keep cool in the delicious flood of cold water.

The sound of the ice cream truck was one reliable bright highlight of the day and we’d race home for nickels to buy Creamsicles or ice cream sandwiches or Fudgsicles or ice pops and hope they wouldn’t melt before they were gone. Hot, sweaty, and sticky, we’d continue to play as the afternoon faded into early evening, and as fathers began returning home from work, we’d hear our names called out and one by one our play group got smaller and smaller. Even those kids whose names weren’t called, would reluctantly head for home until the streets were once again empty.

After dinner, the streets would once again fill with noisy, curious, busy children looking for friends, for something to do until bedtime. Sometimes as the sun began to set, we’d just sit on the stairs leading up to our houses and talk and tell stories to each other. By that time, we were tired, no energy left for more games and we appreciated the coming coolness of evening. If we were lucky, black clouds would appear and a summer thunder storm would arrive sending us scattering back home before it started pouring rain.

On soft summer nights when it slowly became dark, the fireflies would show up. We’d sit and watch for them, first one or two, and then as the street lights came on, the world became magically dark with hundreds of them dancing in the night, glowing their lights on, lights off. I am ashamed to say we would catch them and with a fingernail, separate the glowing part of their torso from the rest and watch as the tiny speck of fluorescent light would slowly disappear.

But one morning, I remember, after we got up and out of bed, we were told to not get dressed, just stay in our underwear. When we came downstairs for breakfast, the house was dark with the venetian blinds tightly drawn to keep out the light. We were told it was too hot to go outside, that we had to stay inside to play. Somehow, we managed to keep busy and I don’t remember being affected by the heat. It was just another day to me, although strange to play in our darkened living room. I watched my mother spend the day at her treadle sewing machine and I can still hear the cluck, cluck, cluck of it if I imagine hard enough. Our woolen floor rugs spent the summer in our basement and on the floor was a coarse, textured covering that took nearly all summer for the bottoms of our bare feet to get used to the roughness. How clearly I remember that.

My dad was still working extra shifts at Cramp’s ship yard doing welding for Liberty Ships used in World War II, so it was just the three of us at home that day.

As dinner time approached, I suppose it was too hot for my mother to even consider cooking a proper meal for us. Instead, she improvised. When I think back to my childhood, I try to remember what we ate for breakfast and lunch. I remember cream of tomato soup by Campbell and grilled cheese sandwiches but I am sure there was much more variety than that. But the one meal I remember was the dinner my mother prepared for us the night of the great heatwave. It was the only thing she could think of making without turning on the stove and making the kitchen even hotter than it was.

She made waffles! Waffle sandwiches to be exact. Between two steaming hot waffles, she scooped vanilla ice cream, a wonderful marriage of hot and cold. It was the most wonderful thing I had ever tasted. Dessert for dinner! What an amazing meal to have during a heat wave.

I never have had waffles and ice cream again. At the New York World’s Fair in 1964 I enjoyed Belgium waffles, a deep pocket waffle with strawberries and cream and have had Belgium waffles many times since. Yum. When I prepare waffles, I serve them with unsweetened applesauce and honey, my favorite. But never waffles and ice cream because I don’t want to damage that delicious memory from my childhood.