Mississippi summers and mosquito bait
We are having summer doldrums with a vengeance this year. It seems to have been uncomfortably hot for months or maybe years. I have trouble remembering when it wasn’t almost unbearable. But then my memory isn’t so great anymore.

But I do remember summers in my childhood. The Mississippi delta country is hot and humid from May to October. The land is flat interspersed with sluggish bayous and a few boggy swamps. It is ideal for crops and snakes and deer and bugs. Mosquitoes were an every-summer plague. Nobody ventures out into the hot humid night in summertime. The air is alive with large fat mosquitoes that fly in mass attacks on any hapless human who dares to go outside after sundown.

My great uncle swore he saw a small child carried off by four average sized mosquitoes one summer evening. (Of course Uncle Robert was prone to exaggerate a bit. There may have been more than four.)

People had two choices in summertime: to stay indoors and swelter or to go outside and become mosquito bait and swelter. Open screen-covered doors and windows provided ineffective cooling and imperfect protection against marauding mosquitoes but that was about all the cooling we had.

Every August we enjoyed relief from heat, humidity and insect life. We visited our ancestral home in Oklahoma. I loved my grandparents and cousins and especially loved the weather.

Days were hot — often in the 90s with strong steady winds every day. The humidity was low and though the sun was hot the low humidity made daytime living tolerable and a welcomed relief from Mississippi.

Oklahoma nights were almost unbelievable. Temperatures cooled, winds moderated into a gentle breeze and not a single mosquito could be found. We children played hide and seek, caught fireflies and spent lots of time lying on a quilt watching shooting stars and identifying constellations of stars in the inky black night sky.

Oklahoma time spawned memories still vivid to this day: Playing with cousins, eating things Grandma cooked because I liked them; going on errands with Grandpa and sitting on a wooden box in the back of his two seater car; riding Grandpa’s horse and eating his strawberries out of the garden.

But the best part of every visit was lying on a quilt feeling a cool breeze caress my skin and looking up at the stars.

Retired pediatrician Bill Fleet now spends his days working with wood (“mostly making sawdust”), fishing (“but not very well”), puttering around his garden and writing. He has lived in Brentwood since 1974. Click here to read his recent columns.