WBRZ - Baton Rouge

It's the first "full" day of Summer with an official welcome to summertime with numerous suggestions as to how to keep cool. As noted in a previous column, I remember my mother instructing me to "fill the washtub" so that my brother Kevin would get a "cool-down" during some blistering weather in Pennsylvania. That same wash tub was also used to ice down beer and pop for summertime events. The washtub became obsolete when inflatable pools came along and another invention - the lawn sprinkler - offered another quick cool-down as we dashed through it. As we got older, the Ewing Park Swimming Pool provided heat relief. One of the best gifts to the neighborhood was the decision by the Shultz and the Lutz families to install backyard pools.