If you consider summer a tad too warm in the UK, spare a thought for those who spend this time of year in Washington, DC.  The suburbs are tolerable but the city is hot and humid, as I well know from the years my mother and I lived there in a cramped apartment in Foggy Bottom.

Nobody much considered the environment in the Sixties, and most buildings were fiercely air conditioned at the time. The outside, of course, is not, until evening sets in and the scent of honeysuckle fills the air.

It was just as the Lovin’ Spoonful described in their 1966 hit Summer in the City.

The mercury regularly hit the mid to high 90s, or about 34⁰-37⁰ C. I took my driving test one August around midday in a VW Bug aka Beetle (no air con). The Dept of Motor Vehicles takes your photo for the licence just after you pass, and for the next five years my sweaty physiog was a glamorous reminder of the occasion.

The Potomac may look inviting, but it’s polluted. If you wanted to cool down, you had to head to a pool. One of our favourites was the public pool on Volta Place, Georgetown, which is still open. The queues were often long, but entry was free though I think the rudimentary lockers required a dime. There wasn’t much there about from the pool and concrete all around. I remember a couple of Egyptians who loudly admired my 14-year old derrière, until my mother yelled at them in fluent Arabic.

Rock Creek Park runs across the NW segment of DC. It now has a lot more organized leisure facilities than it did back then, when it was little more than a haven of shade. My best memory of the park was a summer day camp run by the recreation department. It was free for city kids and my mother wangled three consecutive placements for me, so I spent six happy weeks identifying leaves, creating shoe racks out of fallen branches, and singing the campfire classic We Ain’t Got the Money for the Mortgage on the Farm.  Inexplicably, we also put on a nativity play. Yes, in August. It was as hot as hell wearing the Virgin Mary’s cloak.

I don’t plan to go back to DC just yet, but I will be visiting my US family as usual later this summer.

Meanwhile I’d love to hear your summer memories and great suggestions for keeping cool.

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You may also enjoy The March on Washington.