Carrie Weaver, also part of the Milton group, said her family would all sleep on the back porch.

"It was a lot cooler there," she said.

Jane Thomas grew up in Dornsife in rural Northumberland County.

"We used hand fans," she said. "The funeral directors used to give them out. You just didn't let the heat get to you."

Boardman, of Sunbury, said she worked in a sewing factory, and all the doors and windows would be open. At times, they would have big fans blowing air across the sewing rooms, but the breeze would sometimes tangle the threads on the machines.

"I lived in a second-story apartment, and it was so hot," she said. "I couldn't even afford a fan."

Several remembered swimming in creeks and in the Susquehanna River during hot spells.

Said Boardman: "I used to swim in the river, even though my mother forbid me from doing it. I would sneak off and do it."

Kuenseler said he would swim in the river, as well as at the pool at Island Park on Packer Island, and sometimes he'd even go over to Rolling Green Park in Hummels Wharf.

Poploskie said he used to dam up a creek near his home and lie in the water.

While everyone had a story about coping with hot weather, Shirley Bowling of Milton summed it up best: "You didn't have it, you didn't miss it."

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