When the dog days of summer are actually dog months

I offer up these photos of my great-aunt Helen Stone Prebil, doing what she and her sisters often did in the winters of International Falls, Minnesota. Temperatures could often be -40 degrees for days at a time. The weather there is so extreme that my mother, who had been born with severe lung disease, had to spend some of her high school years with relatives in warm and dry California. When she was 18, she married my father and they prepared to move to Arizona for her health. Phoenix has long been known as therapeutic for TB and asthma patients. Living here extended her life by about 35 years. 

Family road trips took almost 3 days and nights of driving,
in the days before the interstate highway system.

I was born in Phoenix, where the daytime summer temperatures can be 112-120º for days and weeks at a time, punctuated by the occasional humid day with monsoon storms. It takes imagination to survive those days even with expensive air conditioning, wet towels on the shoulders, and fans. It takes thinking about snow and drinking iced tea.

When my mom was younger, she'd tell me about how her crazy aunts Ruby, Ruth, and Helen would go out into the International Falls snow in their swimsuits and take pictures of how brave they were. Sure enough, my cousin scanned this one from her grandmother Helen's album. Obviously taken in the 1930s, it was in black and white. But with photo editing apps and utilities, I've colorized it to immortalize great-aunt Helen frolicking in the snow.

I hope we all feel cooler for having seen it!