Pensive Methods

Still Hot in October By Pence Mefford October 1959 After spending the better part of the last sixteen years being cold, I made a promise to myself that I would never again complain about hot weather. When I say cold, I mean cold almost beyond reason. During the days of World War II, a certain percentage of my time was spent flying high above the earth for hours at a time. The duration of these flights was mandated by the fact there were no friendly landing strips in Germany in those days. My crew and I would not have been welcome even though the enemy would have loved to capture out plane intact. The average temperature inside the aircraft on most of those missions was well below zero. It was bone numbing to say the least. When I reported to Korea in the autumn of 1950, the weather had already taken a nasty turn for the worse. I soon became personally acquainted with something called a “Manchurian Cold Front” so named because of the howling winds that ushered in some of the bitterest cold any of us had ever witnessed. Believe me, as the war wore on, we discovered nothing good came out of Manchuria, not the cold fronts, and certainly not the hordes of Chinese soldiers intent upon killing massive numbers of us. While is true the heat in Korea could be stifling at times, if you ask a veteran of that war what they remember about the weather, it always is the cold. A cold that lasted and lasted until it seemed there would be no end. I knew a sergeant who would usually remark, “Cheer up, lads, the Korean Spring is just around the corner.” About the only comfort the boys on our side could take with the cold was the assurance the soldiers on the other side were just as miserable. When our tanks were bogged down in knee-deep mud, their tanks were slowed by the same conditions. When the skies were heavy with snow their artillery could be any not more accurate than our own. When we could not maneuver due to the persistent freezing rain, we knew they stopped as well. Record high temperatures for a Henry County October have been recorded the past three days and I, for one, am not complaining. The summer was hot and around here there are very few house air-conditioning systems. Drive around the county and you will see an occasional room air-conditioner hanging out a window, but not many. So we deal with the heat the same way we always have—by enduring it. We are a farming community by tradition and farm work has always been dictated by the weather. We make do with what the weather allows us in any season. Don’t worry; it will cool off considerably in the near future. History tells us the end of October is without exception cooler than the beginning of the month. It will happen again this year. And, by the way, this recent uncommon heat spell is in no way connected with Sputnik. If the Russians could indeed manipulate weather over the United States, I seriously doubt they would choose north central Kentucky as a testing ground. Likewise, the weather this month has absolutely no relationship with the number of atomic tests conducted around the world. Granted, such experiments may cause ripples in weather patterns in the future, but not today. As the old sergeant also often said, “Don’t worry, lads, it can get a lot colder than this.”