The Fields Are Burning Today

The summer between my Sophomore and Junior year in college I attended a Campus Outreach Summer Beach Project. College students would go and live in Panama City, FL for about 3 months and we gots lots of training in evangelism. And we had lots of fun too! We worked a full-time job during the week (I worked at Delchamps, a local grocery store), and then we either had meetings at night or just hung around together. On Saturdays we would go to the beach and share with people. Talk about nerve-wracking. I actually cried the first Saturday because I was so nervous. But, it got better and I had a good time. There were about 150 of us there and we all lived in a group of condos right next to each other. I lived with 9 other girls. There were four of us in a room and and we had two bathrooms. It really worked out well, and I don't remember any fights or even any cross words. One of the girls in my room was Catherine Kacvenski. She was from New York state and she was very new to the South. She was fascinated by me and my southern accent. She would try to get me to talk just so she could listen to me. She was very sweet and by the end of the summer we were good friends. We even got together after Beach Project and wrote each other for a long time.

Well, one day I came in from work, threw my purse down and said, "It is so hot my fields are on fire!" Her drink shot out of her mouth and she could not stop laughing. She asked me to please explain what that "southernism" meant. I told her I guess it meant it so hot outside it would cause your fields to burn. I had heard this expression my whole life and never really thought too much about it. She thought it was hilarious.

Well, today was so hot our fields really could have caught on fire. At 6:00 pm it was still 95 degrees! It is the kind of deep humid hot that takes your breath away when you walk outside. The kids would go outside to play and come back out of breath and red-faced. Mark was off work today with the intention of doing yard work and trying to catch up on some things, but it was just too hot to be out there for long. He did get the chicken coop repaired though which was a pretty big job. I know I should not expect anything else from August in Alabama and you would think I would be used to the heat after 35 years here, but it still takes you by surprise.

About 7:00 I went out to pick tomatoes. Matt and Abbie were taking turns pushing each other around in the wheelbarrow. Abbie yelled to me, "Momma, we are playing like there is no electricity...like in 1960!" Maybe I need to concentrate more on history in school.