Sticky like tobacco gum

Unless you've worked in 100-degree weather in the fields of South Carolina with its 88 percent humidity in July, can you really appreciate ice cream, ice of any sort, and a well-grown shade tree with a cool northerly breeze? Maybe. Maybe if you've been living in Oregon in June of 2021!

We've been experiencing some really nice weather for July in the south. Others more used to the milder summer temperatures have not. One hundred and twelve degrees in Oregon. Not their typical summer temps. Eighty-eight here. Not our usual, either. But we're loving it!

I can remember summers so sticky from the sweat brought on by humidity that you felt as if you'd just got out of the creek. And it was only nine o'clock in the morning and you hadn't been swimming - yet! If you were fortunate enough to couple that heat with a tobacco field, well then you were sticky twice over. Once with sweat, and once with tobacco gum.

Tobacco gum more often than not had to wear off. Washing, even with lye soap, sometimes didn't cut it! Each afternoon, in the old days, around three or four o'clock, on the regular, when you were the farthest from the barn, the afternoon thunderstorm would roll through and wet you yet again. The rain would serve to cool things off for a minute or two.

Dependable, reliable, routine weather patterns. Haven't seen those for some time. Guess the good news for the Oregonians is they don't have to couple their present misery with cropping, handing and hanging tobacco.