My, oh my! How times do change!
There has come to be much of a change, and usually for the better, in summer habits and customs in Marietta. The season of heat here is sometimes harder to bear than the climate of the tropics is, especially at nighttime. But in the past 30 or 40 years we have partly relieved ourselves of some of its vexations and discomforts.
If we turn our thoughts backward for a generation or more and think of Marietta as it was in the summer of, say, the Centennial year, 1888, we may see not a little of an improvement in our ideas of accommodating ourselves to the season. Most of that improvement has come about so gradually that the older part of the population have hardly been conscious of it, while the younger part, of course, can see hardly any of it in retrospect. Yet it is a fact that Marietta is more habitable, more comfortable, than it used to be in the June-July-August period, at least a consideration of some of the instances of the differences between a summer of the 1870s and the summer of 1918, warm as it is now becoming, will go far to confirm that judgment as to the fact.
Thus it used to be that the garb which men wore when the temperature was at its height was not conducive to physical ease or to serenity of temper. Lawyers, physicians and other professional men, as well as numerous business men, were often more interested in conventional dignity than in bodily comfort. They wore frock coats; they would not dispense with vests, and if such a man wore a seersucker coat, or even an ordinary sack coat, he was likely to feel that he was somewhat "lowering" himself or his standing in the community. Black silk hats were by no means uncommon, and the tall white hat was long a favorite.
Straw hats were numerous, but they did not make their general appearance so early as they do now. On the whole, they were not so well made, and among elderly gentlemen there were not half so many of them worn as there are today.
Thousands of men wore boots the year round. Most shoes were of black leather, and only young men, and comparatively few of them, put on tan or russet shoes. It was pretty much the same with shirts. They were almost invariably white, and usually they were starched and buttoned up the back. Anybody who was seen in a colored one was regarded as somewhat "sporty" and was likely to be viewed with disfavor by people of conservative taste who prided themselves on their "correct" habits.
As for the stockings which are now worn with knickerbockers or short trousers by men who engage in out-of-tour pastimes or in pedestrian exercise or in lounging about rural retreats, they were known chiefly as part of the uniforms of professional baseball players. But anybody who might go about the streets in knee breeches and stockings was certain to be viewed as quite unconventional or would cause a jocular remark as to whether he might not be an escaped British dude in need of a keeper or that he might be perhaps a Lord Dundreary in his walking "duds."
There was then one garment which was much more worn than it is now, excepting by chauffeurs and motorcar owners, and that was the "duster." As a rule it seldom cost more than two or three dollars. It was of a white, yellowish-white or buff color, and the majority by far of men who traveled by rail or wagon were pretty sure to carry them on their arms as they hurried to or from the railroad stations. Much better railroad beds, much less soft coal, and much less dust have made this convenient protector of personal cleanliness far less needed than it used to be.
What a contrast, for example, today on almost any train and a ride on the very best train, when an engine with a sprinkler would be sent ahead of it to water the tracks, although there was so much dust that despite all that was done to save passengers from discomfort and smudginess, they would usually arrive at their destination with necks and faces that looked as if a swarm of perspiring chimney sweeps were getting out of the train.
How hot our streets then were in some respects and how hard it was to keep the roadway free of dank and ill-smelling dirt, and the mud holes and chuckholes filled up! The new paving here and there, in that period was so far from being complete.
Ice was plentiful and cheap, although not more so than it has been in recent years. Palm leaf fans were much more used than they are now. Refrigerators had hardly ceased to be a luxury for only the rich and the bathrooms in which humble families might cool and refresh themselves were less than half as numerous as they have since become.
It was then not uncommon for hundreds of boys and men to swim in front of the wharves at the foot of Front, Second and Fourth streets and at the foot of Putnam every summer evening, and they were not compelled to beware of a sudden onslaught by the police. Awnings over sidewalks for the protection of shops from the glare and heat of the sun were as numerous as they are in Havana and Naples. Sunstrokes of men and women on the streets were very much more often reported than they are now.
An auditorium such as that of a hall, a church or a theatre was often far more oppressive on a hot night than it is now. This was because gas light contributed somewhat to the warmth, and the fumes or smokiness of it increased the appearance and sense of oppressiveness.
Electric fans, such as we have today for cooling an office, a bed chamber, a dining room or any other apartment, have become the greatest means we have of making a torrid temperature bearable. But at the time we are speaking of, no such apparatus, with its countless revolutions started immediately by a touch of a button or a lever, had been invented. The nearest approach to it was the team power "fan" in a ceiling, usually of a store or spacious business room, together with the lazily moving small one which rested on counters, bars or dining room tables and which, being wound up for a certain time, like a clock, circulated the air sufficiently to keep flies away from its immediate vicinity. Ice by which the air might be cooled and then distributed from funnels or blowers, was tried time and again, but never with more than imperfect results, in attempts to make theatres comfortable for summer performances.
To housewives and servants, a kitchen with its coal fires was a Tophet-like place of dread, and the richest mistress of a mansion could not provide it with either the gas or electric stoves or the electric facilities which now enable so much of the domestic service in even plain or humble households to be performed in an atmosphere free of vapors, smells and blood-heat irritations and distress.
Most shops, industrial concerns and other places of business kept their employees on duty until six or seven o'clock. There were no Saturday half-holidays under the law, and it was only here and there in July and August that some employers would allow all hands to knock off at 3 P.M.
How much of an abatement, too, there has been in the mosquito and fly nuisance, bad enough as they still are. The swarms of insects have considerably diminished as a result of processes for destroying them and their breeding spots. Houses are better protected with nettings and screens, and it is possible to spend a whole summer in Marietta and suffer little or none of the torment which they once would inflict on everybody here.
And what a horror another kind of insect would be in our streets, especially to women and children - the dangling measuring worms, green, yellow or brown, that hung from the limbs of trees at the end of their own threads and got on the faces, necks and shoulders of those who walked through or under the maze of wrigglers!
Before the season of 1918 is at an end, Marietta may be as hot as usual. But has its summers ever been so bearable - at least relatively - as they have become in recent times?
