Senior News Line: Fighting the heat

When cooling centers are opened up in our town, you know it’s brutally hot. It’s not something that’s usually done around here. But recent temperatures have been shocking for our area.

I made a tour of the cooling stations one afternoon, fully expecting them to be mostly empty as warming stations are in winter when people manage to stay warm at home. But no, this heat was different.

There was the library, with more people than chairs, the grateful patrons sitting on the floor against the walls and most of the electrical outlets connected to phones and laptops.

There was the church with the huge community center facility that cranked their air conditioning down and opened the doors to welcome anyone who needed to cool off. The church ladies went into action and put out trays of cold sandwiches and bottles of water.

At the town hall, the doors to the taxation department where we pay for our car tags were left open long after their normal business hours, and the fire department showed up with pizzas in hand for those who’d taken refuge in the office.

The rec center seemed to be the place where many people brought sleeping pads made of folded blankets, getting the first good rest they’d likely had in a week. The whole of two basketball courts was covered in makeshift beds, and as the hour got later the staff dimmed the lights to coax the children to wind down and fall asleep.

As seniors, we aren’t physically equipped to handle the brutal temperatures that have suffocated the country recently.

If you’re in a hot area and have no air conditioning, seek out a cooling center. If there aren’t any, go to the library, the rec center or, better yet, the town offices to insist that they open cooling centers in town.