The only way to really sum up July so far is, “bloody hot.” The weather is so hot and humid it goes past “sultry” and right into “suffocating,” and my drive to and from work feels about the same as spending a half-hour in a sauna, which is especially bad since the drive to work is only ten minutes. Most people I know feel very strongly this is excellent weather for sitting indoors with the air conditioner cranked to “glacial.” The outdoors, it seems, is to be strictly avoided except during spring and fall.
I can’t exactly blame them. When I was growing up in northern Michigan, my mom would have to drag us from our nicely cooled house, where there were books and toys and books and video games and books to go outside and play because it was good for us. Admittedly, it was good for us but that’s not the point. The point is that we would go outside and after a half-hour my brothers and I would start to want to go inside since it was so hot. Personally I would have wanted to read a book outside, but that was considered cheating somehow.
As I said, looking back Mom was right. Getting outside and playing was not only good for us but also necessary, as it taught my brothers and I to take advantage of good weather when we could get it, because all too often if you sit around waiting for a perfect day to come up so you can go outside, you’ll oftentimes find yourself getting out an average of two days every year. Plus, if you don’t take advantage of summer now, you’ll eventually find yourself bundled up in three layers come winter, trying to avoid death by windchill and literally crying to the heavens asking why you didn’t take advantage of the outside when there wasn’t snow on the ground. Then you’ll have to wipe off your tears, which have turned to ice on your cheeks. So getting outside while the weather is nice is a good thing, even if you have to take a full-sized bath towel to wipe off the sweat.
I was thinking of the extremes in the weather today as I passed by the Cresco town limit sign, which lists some of the famous people who have come out of Cresco. I’ve already talked about Norman Borlaug (1 billion people saved and counting), but there are a few other notables.
One notable is the world’s first flight attendant, Ellen Church. This woman was trained as a pilot around the time of Amelia Earhart, putting her in some very distinguished company. Remember, women got the right to vote in 1920, and the whole notion that women weren’t fragile little things wouldn’t really seep into the public consciousness for a few decades. Boeing Air Transit, later known as United Airlines, certainly didn’t hold this view, since the turned Ellen down for a position as pilot.
Ellen, though, wouldn’t give up. She convinced Boeing that if you hired nurses as stewardesses, any fear that passengers have of flying would be eased. Guess who was also trained as a nurse? So Ellen became the head flight attendant at Boeing and was in charge of flying. Later on, other companies caught on to the idea of using good-looking women to allay people’s fears, which leads to the unrelated question of why White House press conferences are not given by bikini models, but that’s a topic for another day.
The main point is that Ellen was an exceptional woman. She trained in what had to be considered a “man’s job,” and when Boeing wouldn’t hire her for the position she wanted she created another freaking position and filled it. Think about that the next time you get turned down for a job!
Then there are the five rear admirals. Five people from Cresco joined the Navy and made their way to the rank of Rear Admiral, which is pretty good. I’d like to point out, however, that Iowa may be as far as you can get from any sizeable body of water, so I really have to wonder what made these men sign up for the Navy. Maybe it was curiosity, or maybe they just really wanted to get away from the acres and acres of lands stretched out before them.
The one part about this that really interests me is the spirit of adventure that Ellen Church and the five rear admirals displayed. A lot of people around here live within a couple hours of their hometown, and many people grew up in this area, went to college and came back. It’s understandable—you live in one place long enough, you get an affinity for it. It’s nice knowing that Joe’s Garage always has the Cajun pickled eggs for seventy-nine cents, or that the Windmill Café has Pizza Wednesdays. Other towns might not have Cajun pickled eggs, and trying to find your way around a new town is unpleasantly disorienting. But these six people bucked the trend, big time. They didn’t just leave, they kept going to new places, rarely slowing down. As someone who likes to think of himself as the kind of person who stretches out and sees new things, I have a special place in my heart for people like these. It’s almost a variant of the spirit of the place I’ve talked about, the “mouse that roared” attitude that makes people reach above what might be expected of them and try to grab excellence. Ellen Church definitely exemplifies that. I’m willing to say that each of the rear admirals exemplify that spirit too, if only because they joined the Navy, a fact which still confounds me.
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