Neto's Tucson: The summers of our youth

At our home the ol’ swamp box cooler is heaving and groaning, marking the arrival of the summer rains and raspados. As the chubasco clouds gather in white billowing towers, the cooler growls.

And with this comes a flood of memories of summers past when I was oblivious to the heat, in awe of the power of the rains and enchanted with the cacophony of the thunder.

As I was growing up on San Rafael Avenue, north of St. Mary’s Hospital, a wash ran behind the house. For most of the year it was dry and invited the neighborhood boys to explore, hide our treasures and re-enact the black and white war movies we watched on television. But during the monsoon season, the wash became our torrential river, full of fury, screaming danger.

When nighttime arrived and the thermometer seemed reasonable, the street became our playground until we drifted back to our homes on our own or at the call of our mothers.

Years later when the family moved to Armory Park, the old downtown library on South Sixth Avenue became my summer haunt. To escape triple-digit temperatures, I found the perfectly cool respite.

For many Tucsonenses, this is our season to enjoy and to remember.

Charlotte Leon Weakland remembers the summers of her youth with relish. Her family lived in an apartment on West Cushing Street, in the old downtown barrio now covered by the Tucson Convention Center. This was during World War II, in the days when there was no cooling for many Tucson families.

“We left the doors open, to the front and back,” she said. The night breeze would flow through the high-ceilinged apartment, cooling it off.

When there was no wind to chase away the heat, the family would sleep outside on a bed.

“Not even mosquitoes bothered us.”

As a child, Weakland loved Tucson’s summer nights, playing in the water-filled streets, walking to the old Cine Plaza on West Congress Street to see the Mexican movies and stage acts.

What Carmen Soto Sieger remembers the most about the summer was the scent.

“The smell of rain was greater then. We used to get that smell in the early afternoon,” she said.

Many older Tucsonans will tell you the same thing. The smell of the desert floor and the flora was more pronounced back in their day. There was more desert, and less concrete and asphalt than there is today.

The Soto family lived on the corner of South Fifth Avenue and West 25th Street. There was a screened porch where the family slept on hot nights.

“There was a big bed, and my mom and dad and me would climb in there,” she said. When it wasn’t raining they slept outside on cots.

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While some of her neighbors fended off the summer heat by improvising, the Sotos had a swamp cooler.

“My dad was so proud when he got it,” she said.

But it required work. Her father wrapped the cooler in a burlap bag that had to be constantly soaked. If not, the cooler just blew hot air.

A special memory from those summer nights was hearing the older boys in the barrio strum the guitars and sing popular songs. They would gather on the corner or on empty lots.

Some of the boys, she added, would later ship off to war in Europe or the Pacific. A few did not return.

Tucson-born Mina Estevez Felix grew up in Southern California but spent her summers at her grandmother’s downtown home on West Council Street off of North Stone Avenue.

“It used to rain every afternoon. As soon as the rain would stop, my girlfriend and I would stand under the Chinaberry tree and shake it very hard. It would rain again,” she said.

They slept outside whenever they pleased and she especially loved to hear the pinging of the tin roof when rain pelted her nana’s house.

For Felix’s afternoon nap, her nana would have her sleep on a damp mat on the floor. The house had a swamp box that her grandmother tended to, making sure the straw mat did not dry out, Felix said.

“The heat wasn’t a big factor back then like it is today,” she said.

A summer treat was to drive out, slowly, to the Sabino Canyon area where small farmers grew produce. Felix especially loved the tomatoes.

“I didn’t care about anything else but the tomatoes.”

On Saturday afternoons, she and other kids would fill the Fox Tucson Theatre to watch cartoons and serials, and live acts and talent shows. It was the gathering of the Mickey Mouse Club.

“Everybody belonged to the club,” Felix remembered.

And everybody has a summertime of memories and experiences. It’s our special time in the desert.