How did your family beat the heat when you were a kid?

[raging moderate]

55. ;

We lay on the bare wooden floor, with no blankets and in our coolest clothing, right under the open double windows. It was the top floor of a city apartment, and boy, was it hot!

My mother told me about the terrible heat waves in Chicago during the Great Depression. It got so hot that it stayed hot and airless all night in the city neighborhoods. She said that thousands and thousands of families slept together on their family blankets, in rows and rows along the beach, right beside Lake Michigan. As far as she could see, the beach was covered by these rows and rows of family blankets. They slept that way all night, with some police officers keeping watch over them.