My first job, at 14, was landscaping a surgeon’s mansion. He was highly successful. He also married old money. They had an early model Rolls Royce Ghost in the garage. On each of the sweeping staircases there was an oil painting of their beautiful daughters. These were the people you saw in movies who didn’t exist, except that they did.
It was a summer job, I was working for one of my junior high teachers. My mother would take me to a McDonald’s parking lot to meet that teacher each morning, and each morning it was already hot. Even in a little cooler there was trial-and-error about what would survive until lunchtime. My teacher and I would drive over to the really nice part of the nice part of town. And she worked all day, and taught me to work all day. She taught me a lot that summer. I learned how to wrap towels, like she had in the Peace Corps, to keep cool. I learned the best places to take breaks. She talked a lot about music and her kids and other normal things about life, too. It was one of my first instances of interacting with a teacher beyond the classroom model.
It was very, very hot that summer. Almost dangerously so. And these people’s property was large. By the time we worked from one end of their property to the other it was time to start over again. If I didn’t mention this already, that was a hot, hot summer.
I use that story, kind of as a joke, to explain how I knew I wanted to go to college and get a nice, comfortable indoor job. Really, I’d already realized I wanted to be in an office, looking sharp in a coat and tie. But that summer, and some later ones that involved a bit of real work, only reinforced the idea.
I was thinking about that, when I spent an hour or so late this morning doing very, very, light work, mostly in the shade, but still under a heat index of 100 degrees.
People out there doing real work in the heat deserve breaks and water and shade. It’s easy to forget how demanding some conditions can be. Whenever we have people in to work on something, I’m constantly bothering them about needing air or heat or ice or … whatever.
I think of all of those people I see harvesting crops in the fields. When I ride by them on my bike I slow down a little bit and try to see if I can pick up any conversation, prepared to wave if anyone looks my way. But, absorbed in the details of their work, they seldom do. We’ll go down to one of the farm markets this weekend, or next week, and pick up some fresh produce. We’ll enjoy it, of course, knowing it is up from the soil right around us. But I’ll also wonder how many breaks the hands get. Hopefully, these last few weeks, they’ve been getting enough. Hopefully that becomes the norm when the conditions call for it.
Fortunately, this heat wave is forecast to break at the beginning of the next week.
Until then, stay cool as best you can. Pool floats are good for that.
And since the weekend is upon us, I’m giving you permission to unwind. Here’s 60 seconds of wavy clouds from four feet under water.
It’s Friday; don’t forget to breathe.
