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Beat the heat PDF Print E-mail
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Written by Kristen Waggener   
Wednesday, 01 July 2009 08:00
The sun beat down on Rick Clinton’s back as he and fellow city workers Joey Clinton, Brandon Silance, John Walls and Todd Barker readied themselves to move heavy materials from the back of a flatbed Friday afternoon.

Sweat dripped down their foreheads as humidity immersed the air.

“It’s just hot,” Clinton said.

City crews worked all last week as temperatures rose into the high 90s, making even the slightest movement a labor.

Bill Richards took shelter in the Louisburg Senior Center to escape the heat Friday, regretting the afternoon he spent mowing his lawn the day before and hoping temperatures would drop in the near future so he could finish the job.

“I was out on my mower yesterday afternoon. I was sweating so bad, I couldn’t see,” Richards said. “The sweat was pouring into my eyes.”

But the near-100-degree temperatures Louisburg saw last week were really nothing compared with the “Dirty ’30s,” he said.

“I think back to the ’30s and how much heat we had then,” Richards said. “There was no electricity, either. No telephone, no nothing.”

He remembers taking a gunny sack and drenching it in a bucket of water, then hanging it over the window.

“That was your cooling then,” he said, chuckling. “Nobody had air conditioning back in them days.”

Ethel Barnes said she is staying in any air-conditioned building she can.

“I feel for the people that don’t have (air conditioning),” she said.

The heat also has prompted Barnes to make sure her pets keep cool, too.

“I try to keep my cat inside, and I’ve got a stray cat,” she said. “I’m making sure he’s got water.”

At Louisburg Aquatic Center, parents and children soaked themselves in the cool water to beat the temperatures.

“We’re just hanging at the pool,” Vicki Hites said as she and friend Tricia Bohn waded in the shallow end of the pool, watching Bohn’s 21/2-year-old daughter, Sadie, splash in the gutters.

The duo and their daughters planned to stay inside in the air conditioning Friday night to watch a new movie premiering on the Disney Channel.

“We’re going to stay cool and watch ‘Princess Protection Program,’ ” Hites said.

Though temperatures dropped slightly by Sunday and the humidity subsided, city crews back at Louisburg’s shop on South Rogers Road are thankful for a couple major things: water and breaks.

“We’ve got a good employer,” Clinton said. “And big shade trees.”
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