July in St. Louis can be a little uncomfortable. Although we’re strong, we can’t stand in front of flaming barbecue pits on July 4 and grill pork steaks outside when it’s 101 degrees outside. But even we know our limits. We reached them in an unreal summer when the Earth seemed to have shifted its orbit just a few light-minutes closers to the sun.
This was summer 1936 when St. Louis experienced an uninterrupted 37-day stretch at 100 degrees or more. It had been an amazing year, but it was not the worst. Many people were still unemployed after the Great Depression. Missouri farmers were eating topsoil in a drought that was straight from the Bible. You could take the edge off in an environment without air-conditioning by taking a cold shower or swimming in a pool. Then you could go back to your normal life and enjoy a delicious pork steak on a barbecue.
The wealthy boarded air-conditioned trains to travel to Michigan’s lakes or Colorado’s mountains for chateaux. Everyone else improvised. “For the last few nights, hundreds of motorists sought relief from the heat by driving to the country and parking in relatively cooler valleys,” said the spokesperson.
St. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported. It said that a favorite section was in the vicinity of the Municipal Airport. Some clever so-and-so’s created a crude DIY system of air-conditioning inside a vehicle by placing a bucket of dry ice on the floor. Apartment dwellers who didn’t have cars made their balconies into sleeping areas. Hamilton Avenue tenants were overheated and tried their balconies out Friday night. When they couldn’t sleep they tried their voices. The experiment was made more successful when heat-sufferers joined the fray, and it ended up being a community sing.
They were still hot but their whistles were wet: The water commissioner had earlier reported that St. Louis had almost surpassed its 1930 record of 193,000,000 gallons of water consumed in 24 hours. Water could prove to be just as dangerous as heat. Swimming enthusiasts underestimated the speed at which exhaustion can set in. The GlobeDemocrat highlighted this by listing heatstroke deaths and drowning deaths. Water was the only thing that could end the misery, and it did. Roscoe Nunn (head of the St. Louis Weather Bureau and one of the most quoted public figures in the town that summer) finally announced that rainstorms would provide “considerable relief.”
He was correct: It rained nearly continuously through September and the average temperatures were well below the normal, much to the delight of all in the town.
