I think it was 103⁰ on the Fourth of July and the Fourth was packed in the middle of several 100 degree, or at least 90 degree, days.

Some might like it hot. I don’t.

When I was a kid, my entire family employed a playbook of tactics to stay cool during the summer. Uncle George used to go out to the movie theaters where cold air circulated along with the smell of machine buttered popcorn. He wouldn’t care what the movie was. To him, double features were the best. He would pay for his ticket and find a red velour seat in a dark corner and literally chill out with a long nap.

I would spend many afternoons with my friend Lin at the Leo Pool, the public pool in Melrose Park, complaining about the chlorine and venturing cautiously further into the deep end. I thought walks through my subdivision were grand when I timed my progress down any block so that I would be at a certain juncture exactly when the undulating arc of a lawn sprinkler could spray me. Of course, I thought room air conditioners were great. Since we couldn’t afford to install them in every room of our house, I remember dragging my mattress to my parents’ or my sister Barbara’s bedroom so that I could sleep under the hum of the family Fedders.

In more recent years, I would take long drives just so I could refresh my skin under the cold moist air conditioned air blasting from the dashboard, or I’d purposefully duck into stores with no intention to shop.

How did people ever survive before air conditioning? I wondered during our Midwest’s recent string of scorchers. If there wasn’t such an appliance perhaps less work would get done during the summer and more of us would carry around dew rags, but, I had to conclude, we’d survive. I watched my mind meander into a corollary contemplation. How did we enjoy our summers without the simple pleasure of a cold drink? Without ice? Delving into such a reflection is, of course, what Google is for, right?

I learned a lot about ice online. Some historians believe ice has been around since 1700 BC. Insulated rooms were built underground near natural sources of ice, near mountains or deep lakes, and the ice kept in these ice houses were used, like our grandmothers’ and great grandmothers’ ice boxes, to keep perishable food from spoiling. In the early 1800’s, the Tudor brothers, wealthy siblings from Boston, came up with the idea that they could sell blocks of ice from their estate’s pond in the Caribbean – once they built their own ship to get it there. Apparently, the product didn’t catch on right away (the locals didn’t miss what they never had). In 1933, the flexing ice cube tray was invented.

My mind started swirling with all the new factoids I was picking up. Time for a nice tall glass of Pellegrino. I grabbed a glass and unconsciously pressed it against the lever of my freezer’s ice dispenser. I listened to the sound of cubes rumbling in a cyclone path then down a plastic shoot into my glass. I didn’t even have to open the freezer door.

Ah. Ice is nice. Being able to fill a glass with sparkling clear cubes whenever I want a cold drink, is no small thing.