Sleeping Outside

by Jerry Blackerby

During the hot, Texas summers I had the best room in the house or sometimes out of the house. I slept on a screened-in porch or outside on a cot.

In today’s air-conditioned world, we have become soft! Growing up in the 1930s, 40s and 50s we did not have air conditioning. Many people slept on sleeping porches, screened-in to protect from insects. Some of us slept outside under the stars during the summer.

My grandparents had a sleeping porch as long as I can remember. The sleeping porch was the year-round bedroom for Mom’s younger brother. The first time I remember sleeping in that room I was about four. The sleeping porch became my bedroom anytime I stayed with my grandparents, winter or summer.

We lived in many different places as I grew up and several had sleeping porches. My sisters usually had their own bedroom, but I was relegated to whatever was left; the living room, kitchen, a large pantry room, screened-in porch, or outside during the summer.

One place my bedroom was a long, narrow, screened-in room with wood shutters; an add-on to the existing house. The shutters were propped up in the summer and let down when it rained or during the winter. Canvas around the edges of the shutters kept out some of the cold wind in the winter.

Another place had a separate garage, converted into a room. The garage doors opened horizontally and the entire front of the garage was screened-in. A door installed on the side was the entrance to my room.

In another house my bedroom was a small storeroom or pantry room off the kitchen, without even a window. My half-bed filled the outside wall. I slept in this room during the cold months, which was good because it was probably the warmest room in the house. As soon as it was warm, I slept on a canvas army cot outside the house, unless it rained which was rare in west Texas.

Was I scared sleeping outside? Normally, I did not even think about being scared. I slept out so much that it was second nature. But one night in 1946 I was sleeping on the front porch of our house, right outside the window from Mom and Dad’s bed and woke up about midnight with Dad screaming, "Rattlesnake!"

Mom had heard a noise and woke Dad. We did not have electricity in that house so Dad had a flashlight under his pillow. Dad stepped out of bed and aimed the flashlight toward the noise when he saw a snake crawling along a shelf on the wall next to the fireplace. Dad thought he heard a rattle and jumped into the middle of the bed screaming, “Rattlesnake!”

That’s when I woke up, scared to death. Dad told me to stay in the bed. Now that was scary, thinking that a rattlesnake was loose in the house. I didn't sleep very well the rest of the night. We never knew for sure what that snake was, but it was probably just a bull snake. They look very much like a rattlesnake and can shake their tail just like one. If its tail hit some paper, the paper may have sounded something like a rattle. The snake probably came in and exited where the fireplace chimney was beginning to lean away from the house.

The next morning I started to step off the porch and nearly stepped on a green garden snake. We saw a lot of snakes around that place, but I never saw a rattlesnake anywhere near the house. I slept on that porch all summer.

When I married after returning home from the Navy in 1955, I found that my wife’s mother and father also slept outside during the summer in southwestern Oklahoma. They moved a flatbed wagon to the east side of the house and placed their mattress on the wagon, unless it rained.

In 1958, my wife and I moved to Grand Bahama Island with our two children. We had a small place that consisted of a one-room camping trailer with a two-room cabana added on. The two-room cabana had a plywood floor on 2x4 runners. Two walls of the cabana had large screen windows with wooden shutters. In effect, we were sleeping on a screened porch all the time. The breezes from the ocean would blow through the screen windows, making it fairly comfortable at night. We did not have electricity, so could not have fans or air conditioning.

Could I live that way today? I doubt it, since I have become soft like most people and need the cool air of an air conditioner.