The Weather Notebook: Summers in the Big Apple

Summers in the Big Apple
Listen in RealAudio
Email Your Comments

Dave Thurlow, Host

Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow for The Weather Notebook and today we hear from commentator Beth Tokar as she remembers the way it used to be in New York City...hot...muggy...and 10 million people crunched together.

Times Square from 45th and Broadway - Earthcam
"Air conditioning helps, of course. In fact, New York's Carnegie Hall was one of the first air conditioned buildings in the country, back in 1902. But when I grew up in the fifties, nobody I knew lived in Carnegie Hall. Fans were the best you could expect in most offices and apartments. And the subway? Fuhgedaboudit! Think steam bath, with all your clothes on.

But hey, families in my neighborhood know ho to cope - we were New Yorkers, right? The second we got home, we plunged into our swimming pool, otherwise known as the bathtub. Then we repaired with iced drinks to the patio -- you know, the fire escape. For a late supper at the country estate, we packed food and blankets to a nearby park. And during heat waves, we could always sleep in the backyard - that is, on the roof of our apartment building.

To achieve that ultimate state, cross-ventilation, we latched our apartment doors open and used screens instead. Screen doors? In New York City?? It's true. If you visit my mother's building today, you can see the hinges where all the doors hung.

When I visit New York in summer now, the past seems like a fever dream. I look at people blithely going from their air-conditioned apartments to frosty offices via the newly air-conditioned subway, and think: wimps."

Beth Tokar reminisces about New York City summers from her home in San Francisco, California. If you have a childhood weather memory, we'd love to hear about it. Give us a call, toll-free, at 888-724-6001 and leave it on the machine. If you do, we'll send you a Weather Notebook Folklore poster. Our show is underwritten by Subaru, the beauty of all wheel drive with major support provided by the National Science Foundation.