I return now to the column I’d begun to write a couple of weeks ago, before a bear was spotted in the heart of Cookeville. It’s hard to know what to do in a situation like that. Some columns (commonly called “evergreen”) can be written and stored away and published most any time. Others are time or situation-sensitive. I wouldn’t send in a Christmas column in April or a column about daffodils in September.
So…a column about waiting until Memorial Day to turn on the air conditioning should be published as close to Memorial Day as possible, right? Right! Unless a black bear shows up in your neighborhood. Because that’s timely, too.
Can I tie that bear in to shutting my windows and turning the air on? You bet I can. A bear standing on its hind legs could have easily reached several of the windows in my one-story house. Its strong, sharp claws could have shredded my screens. And a bear’s climbing ability is legend. In a matter of minutes, the bear could have been inside my house.
Now that would be a column. And I would have unwittingly allowed it to happen because–as is always the case before Memorial Day–my windows were wide open.
Waiting until Memorial Day to turn on the air is a family tradition. When I was a young child, we didn’t have air conditioning. Windows were open most of the time because we lived in the south. Little Rock, Arkansas. Jacksonville, Florida. Augusta, Georgia. Even in the 1960s, before any of us had heard the term “global warming,” it was hot and humid in those places from March through October.
Thankfully, that didn’t keep my friends and me from having a raucous outdoor childhood. When the heat turned our faces beet red and soaked our clothes with sweat, when dirt beads caked our necks and our shoes and socks were abandoned entirely, we got a drink of not-very-cold water out of somebody’s garden hose and collapsed under a shade tree until we recovered.
Then we were back at it.
In those days, most cars were cooled by windows that cranked down, except for the used Edsel my daddy bought on a crazy whim in 1964. It had an after-market air-conditioner that hung down almost to the floorboard of the front seat. It didn’t emit much cold air, but it did spit (and I mean SPIT) cold water all the way to the back seat and onto my brother and me, which was fascinating and wonderful.
When we moved to Nashville (yet another summer hot spot) in the summer of 1967, our new house—wonder of wonders—not only had air conditioning, but central air conditioning, an unimaginable luxury.
But here was the deal: My ever-frugal parents ran the air until Labor Day. Then it was turned off and the windows were thrown open. The following Memorial Day, if it was hot enough, they turned the air back on. To do otherwise would almost certainly make us lazy and soft. No one with a true pioneer spirit would use air conditioning until it was really, really summer. That tradition has stuck with me for almost 60 years. The date on the calendar, not the weather conditions, determines when I turn the air on and when I turn it off. I still manage to survive the heat by going barefoot. Wearing as little clothing as is decent. And, of course, my windows are open.
When the black bear was spotted the Friday before Memorial Day, I didn’t consider shutting them. I simply wiped the dirt beads from my neck with a cold wet washrag. I sprawled flat-out on the living room floor under the cranked-up ceiling fan. And I hoped against hope that the wandering bear would be so hot himself that he’d find a shady spot in which to rest and leave me alone.
Which I assume he did.
(June 6, 2026)