SUMMER FUN... July (Part 71c)

We’d gotten about a third of the boxes moved when Jay decided that we better start segregating them by category. On this one day I had a bit of a wait for the printer so decided to get started on my own. I’d been stacking boxes for a few minutes and looked across the hall and saw Rena working at a table. What caught my eye was the fact that she had her feet together on the floor and her knees were spread at least a foot apart. I won’t insult your intelligence by saying I could see her panties because I couldn’t. It was too dark under the table. But the position she was in had gotten my attention.

With Jay’s suggestion I’d created five separate areas. Eventually, Rena came in saying she was on her break and asked if I wanted company. I wasn’t going to say no so she proceeded to come in and to sit on one of the stacks of boxes. As I watched she did almost the same thing that I’d seen her do earlier. Feet together and her knees apart. It wasn’t as wide as before but this time, with plenty of light, I knew what was looking at... a nice white triangle. It was hard not to stare. I honestly don’t think she was doing it on purpose but I had be judicious with my peeking. I was somewhat relieved when she got up and went back to her office.

Jay had met with the Director of Purchasing and was told that we could expect to have all the partitions we needed by Labor Day. He was also told that all the equipment we needed to have our own dedicated atmosphere (regulated humidity, heating and cooling) was expected sometime in August. That was especially important to us because, with the higher humidity of Summer, we were having major difficulties with cards getting jammed on the “throats” of all the card feeders. The paper cards were absorbing the moisture and swelling up. The jams made for a lot of extra keypunching and slowed us up in the processing of our projects. I remember asking Jay when he came back from his meeting if he got an up close and personal look at Corrine, the Director’s secretary. As I remember it he blushed while Jo laughed.

Near the end of the month there was an extended heat wave that blanketed the whole area. Jay and Jo were on break when everything shut down. No power for the computer or other equipment and no lights or air conditioning. Supposedly there were emergency generators for such situations. We waited and waited but nothing. Jay had returned and then left to find out what was happening. It didn’t take long for the air to get warm and stale. Jay was gone for quite a while and when he came back he didn’t look all that happy. He’d found out that the generators were only powerful enough to cover the normal electricity needs and not the air conditioning. The reason we didn’t have either was that as soon as the generators came on they kicked right off because of the overload from the air conditioners.

If there was one time we were glad that Leo wasn’t there that was it. His tendency was to react without getting facts. Jay found that Irwin (the chief Auditor) knew the real source of the problem. When the County Center was built they chose the cheapest way and the land it was built on was reclaimed wetlands. (Try that today!) The utility company hadn’t planned for a development of that magnitude in that area and their infrastructure was marginal, at best. With the continued high temperatures the area system became overloaded and there was a local “brown out”. Two of the main transformers had “fried” and it would be at least 24 hours until they could be replaced.

Jay and Irwin decided that there was no point in staying as almost everyone needed electricity to do their jobs plus it was getting very uncomfortable without fresh air. When Jay came in to tell us he asked Jo and I if we wanted to go over to the ocean to “cool off”. Even with the heat we’d been experiencing it was always cooler by the ocean. It was about 11 am or so. I should’ve passed on the offer but went along with them anyway. We headed for the barrier beach as Jay had been given permission to use the property that we'd worked on at any time until the house was repaired and ready for occupancy. As far as Jay knew that wouldn’t be until sometime in August. When we got to the town closest to there we stopped and got some food, sodas and beer for our "picnic".

When we pulled onto the property we could see that some of the sand that had been pushed out into the bay behind the house by the storm had been bulldozed back under and around the house itself. To get out of the heat and sun we chose to eat under the house. No work had been done on the house since I'd last seen it. All the decks and stairs were still missing. There was an extension ladder up to the back door to gain entry and Jay ventured up to see if anything had been done inside. While he was gone I watched as Jo pulled her slip off from under her skirt. It was probably the slip that I saw but, in my mind, I saw her panties. When Jay came back down we all walked out to the water’s edge. It was quite different from the last time I’d seen it. Instead of a big expanse of sand in the form of a fan there was hardly enough sand left to call it a "beach". The sand that we did see was in the form of a small island. They had bulldozed all the sand they could get to without getting the bulldozer into the water and pushed it back under the house. The tide was now high which made it seem like a moat between us and the sand island. I don’t remember the words that Jay offered up as a challenge but, in essence, it was a dare for us to get out to the new “island”.

To be continued...