July 18 was one of the hottest days ever in Iola.
However, it wasn’t Tuesday. Rather, on July 18, 1954, the mercury nearly blew off the top of the thermometer when it hit 115 degrees.
It was a Sunday — talk about fire and brimstone — and portended to be the hottest July since record-keeping began about 1900 at the Register. Starting on July 11, seven of the next eight days reached 110 degrees or higher, including temperatures of 114, 116, 117, 112, 114, 115 and 110. That July, 27 of the 31 days reached at least 100 degrees.
In no manner are these figures meant to downplay the hot weather we’re having this summer. Tuesday was miserably hot, compounded by high humidity.
The forecast doesn’t promise much respite, although it seems about every day a bank of clouds appears on the horizon with the possibility of a shower. When it did come Friday, the rain fell in horizontal sheets from the gale force winds that uprooted trees and swept away anything not tied down. Our neighbor’s trampoline cleared a four-foot fence with ease and wedged itself against a tree.
Now let me tell you about my memories as an 11-year-old in 1954 in Humboldt.
I don’t think there was a single air-conditioning unit in town. A few people had swamp coolers, which entailed a fan blowing over tubing carrying water, or some similar apparatus. I don’t remember for sure, but I think that only made the humidity rise to the point that it defeated its purpose.
At the Johnson-Oliphant house — we lived with my grandparents — we had a large fan on legs.
If the air was hot, that’s what got circulated. The only cooling effect came after you worked up a sweat and stood in front of it.
My buddies and I took to sleeping outdoors, which was kind of fun, but also an ordeal. We had trouble getting to sleep and then by morning, when the dew point and dropping temperature coincided, we awoke feeling clammy and immediately found we either had one of several kinds of creepy crawlers on us, or were itching like crazy from the hordes of mosquitoes that patrolled the neighborhoods. After a few nights we abandoned the pioneer approach and opted for anywhere near a fan. If you had walked down Mulberry Street at midnight, you would have heard the ubiquitous moaning and rattling of fans, especially those that were not fastened securely.
Come daybreak, we often headed for the Neosho River on our bikes.
Long before that record-breaking July, the river had quit running and eventually reached the point that drinking water was hauled to Humboldt. City leaders likely had prohibited watering gardens, wouldn’t have helped anyway, and discouraged bathing.
But we young scouts didn’t suffer. Even though the river wasn’t flowing, not far below the dam were shallow pools that kept us cool and relatively clean.
The heat didn’t seem to have as much of an effect as now, but that’s likely because of the difference in perspective from an 11-year-old and an 80-year-old.
The river was our only recourse; the Humboldt pool didn’t open until 1957.
