The Hottest Summer in History

Ah, Matilda, my wonderful car. When I purchased said car it had a lot of problems. I mean a lot. Which is the reason my roommate sold it to me for so cheap. After all, she could either pay to fix the car and sell it for more, or not fix it and sell it for less. She asked me which I preferred, and since I have a brother who fixes things for me at-cost :), I chose the latter.

So I bought Matilda. Realizing that $250 for a car was a steal and that I didn't want to pay more than $500 after repairs and registration, I decided to fix as little as possible--just so the car would pass inspection.

And, what do you know, you don't need to have a working air conditioner to pass inspection.

I bought the car in May of 2007. The summer of 2007 was the hottest on record for Utah. 25 days in July with temperatures 95 degrees or higher. July 4th, St. George was 118 degrees. Yeah, that's what death feels like.

So it was during this delightful summer that I had a car with no air conditioning. (This problem also affected the heating, but I will save that for another post about winter.) Although most people in this situation would suffer with the windows down, my windows were broken.

Yes, broken. The driver's side window would roll down, but something in the window kept it from rolling down straight. So it would go down crookedly, with the left side going down farther than the right. Then, when you tried to roll it up, the pointed right side would go straight up and past the top of the door frame, leaving open areas on each side of the window.

I should take a picture, but that means I would have to roll the window down.

It usually takes two people to force the window back into the right position, although I have done it by myself in rainstorms before. It involved my feet and hips and head and hands. Awkward.

Anyway, so in this hottest summer in history in Utah, I was driving a car without air conditioning and with a drivers side window that didn't roll down. The passenger side window, though, did roll down...most of the time...

It was like death at 110 degrees.