Not Yet a Disaster

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 06:00:00 -0500

When I was a kid in Muncie, the men on our street worked with their bodies, and summer heat was part of the job description in a way nobody discussed because it wasn’t a discussion. It was a condition. My father laced up his steel-toed boots every morning and drove to the Delco-Remy plant in Anderson, where the line ran regardless of July, regardless of what the thermometer said outside. There were fans. There was not, in those years, much else. He came home with his shirt wrung out and ate whatever my mother had made and went to bed and did it again in the morning. He didn’t complain about this. It was the arrangement.

Public Health on Sunday Evening Review

Not Yet a Disaster