Editor's note: Karla DeLuca is on vacation. This column was originally published in August, 2002.

Southerners are generally characterized as being leisurely. Slow even.

There is a perfectly good reason for this, and it has nothing to do with intellect, as some in the movie industry would have us believe.

We instinctively walk, talk and move at a more leisurely pace from self preservation — to avoid dying of a heatstroke.

Northerners, bless their little fast-talking hearts, don't understand this.

If the temperature hits the high 90s in New York City, it's on the national news because people start dropping like flies. They don't understand that when it's hot, you have to slow down and be still in order to survive.

Many don't understand hot, period.

You never hear people up north say, "I was in high school before we got heat," and yet, before the late 60s, most people I knew here in East Texas didn't have air-conditioning.

When I want to impress my kids with what a hard life I had growing up, I tell them that I didn't have air-conditioning until I was in high school. Not even one lousy window unit.

I'll admit, that doesn't make a tremendous impression, since living without air-conditioning is beyond their comprehension. It would be much the same as if I were to say, "We lived on the sun when I was your age." They wouldn't believe it, but it was pretty close to the truth.

Our entire day was spent avoiding the heat, which was pretty near impossible. We talk about kids hanging around inside too much, but we spent most of our time indoors too.

It was too hot to play outside, unless it involved soaking each other with water from a hose, and even then, you couldn't be in a hurry. If you didn't wait to let the water run out for a while, you'd be scalded by the water that had been baking in the hot sun for hours.

It takes a while for Northerners to comprehend this. Even in the summertime, their swimming pools are full of freezing-cold water, their lakes and reservoirs are full of freezing water which comes out of their faucets freezing cold.

A friend of mine who had recently moved to Texas from New York complained that something was wrong with her cold water.

She turned on the faucet at the kitchen sink. "Feel of it," she said. "It never gets cold."

Yes, well, a Dallasite wishing for cold tap water in July, is like a soul in Hell wishing for ice water.

"Let's think about this, Ariane," I said. "Your tap water comes from a reservoir, which is outside, where the temperature has been in the 98 to 100-degree range for the past eight weeks. Your 'cold' water won't be much cooler than a cup of coffee until about October.

"In pre-air-conditioning days, waiting for things to cool off used to be a habit. We had to wait for everything to cool off — the seat of our bicycles, the seats in the car, the metal lawn chairs, the picnic table.

We weren't being leisurely. We weren't being lazy. We were being cautious. We didn't want third-degree burns on the backs of our legs.

Of course, it's great to talk about how hard we had it in the "good old days." It's quite another to relive it.

I was forced to drive an un-air-conditioned car on a weekend when the temperature was set to reach a measley 94 degrees. I left the house full of energy. I had people to see, places to go, things to do.

After 15 minutes, I decided that I had seen all the people I cared to see, gone all the places I wanted to go and done all the things I wanted to do, with the exception of going to my air-conditioned home to wait until it cooled off.

And I was certainly going to be quick about it.

Quick Sweet and Hot Pickles

1 gallon whole dill or sour pickles

5 pounds sugar

3 tablespoons mustard seed

3 tablespoons celery seed

1 teaspoon allspice

8 cloves garlic

2 tablespoons red pepper flakes

Drain and discard pickle juice. cut into 3/4 inch thick slices and place in a two-gallon, non-metallic crock. Pour sugar and spices over pickle slices, cover crock. Stir after 24 hours, then stir two or three times daily. They are ready to eat after the third day. Pack into quart jars and keep refrigerated. Whole dried cayenne peppers may be substituted for flakes, allowing one or two per jar.

Karla is editor and publisher of

The Daily Sentinel.