It was early afternoon, in our spruce- and pine-shaded yard it was 78 degrees F. It was March 22.

This customer, I, was wearing shorts for the second afternoon in a row. For two afternoons now, when we drove either of our little Toyotas, Dolores and I had the air conditioner working.

It was March 22. The temperature was 78 degrees F in the shade.

Dolores and I are two of "our friends," who believe in global warming.

This time of year, Downeast Transportation is starting to check the air conditioners in the buses to be sure they are operating correctly because summer is two or three months down the road.

On March 21, as I was driving my bus in Bar Harbor in that same 78-degree weather, I pondered whether the air conditioner was operating correctly. A passenger said it was 73 degrees on his little thermometer he carries.

No, I don't know why he carries a little thermometer. Probably a feature of his cell phone or other gadget.

In Bar Harbor, so many younger women and girls were out wandering the streets, the women gathered around their baby carriages, all the women wearing shorts and tight jeans with T-shirts or some kind of tank tops, that it looked like a scene from TV's Desperate Housewives. It was March 21, and the same gatherings occurred on March 22.

In Bar Harbor, I noted -- but didn't look at -- a college-aged young woman wearing some kind of skirt thing that was so far north at the bottom that the top of south couldn't have been far away. She was also wearing those stocking-like things that stretch so far north they cover south in case the skirt doesn't. A group of college-age boys were gathered around.

At least that hasn't changed. But it was March 21 rather than the middle of summer.

The TV weatherman, pronounced "meteorologist" these days by the local readers of the news who introduce them, announced that this was the hottest spell on record for this time of year. I heard this on March 21 and March 22.

The technician said that our heating boiler is basically worn out from all those years of heavy duty. He noted that the pollutants from the burning oil had eaten away part of the side wall of the unit, which he had repaired and insulated. Thankfully, he assured us, the maintenance insurance we carried with our oil company would pay for either repairs or a totally new oil boiler, depending on what the company manager decided to do.

Ah, that at least sounded like March 22.

A few years ago, I was preparing one April morning to drive a bus north to a tiny town in the woods north of us. The general manager happened to be at the scene, talking with someone else.

He turned to me and said, "Where are your pants?"

I was wearing shorts because of the heat this early April morning.

"Oh," I replied, "I'm heading up to Mariaville, where there's probably snowdrifts. I didn't want my pants cuffs to get wet from the snow, so I wore shorts."

This was April.

This March we're considering what to do about our worn-out heating boiler. The technician said it would last a year or so, so we have time to think about it.

I wonder what the temperature will be in a year or so, say next February.

One of the reasons, a minor one, I moved to Maine from Pennsylvania in 1965 was to escape the heat and humidity that pervaded Penn's Woods.

Now, in Maine, we're expecting more than the usual number of mosquitoes this summer, because the bats are dying. The bats are dying due to some new disease that's coming to Maine from away -- away down South somewhere. It's getting warm enough in the North to attract all those buggy Southerners.

I recall in the late 1950s, while vacationing in Belgrade, a then-farm country northwest of Augusta, our family tip toeing out into a field one evening to see if we could spot any deer. We were dressed for the August evening, warmly, because it was cool -- cold for us Pennsylvaniacs. A lot colder than it was this March 21st and 22nd and even 23rd.

I recall those April snowstorms of years past. I remember leaving Maine for a vacation in Virginia one May. I remember it because there was snow on the ground in the as-yet-unwood-pelleted Pine Tree State when we left.

On this hot March 22, 2012, we were thinking about replacing our worn-out heating boiler. Talking about it outside in the summer heat of early afternoon.

Because "our friends," including us, are concerned about pollution that may be adding to what could -- or could not -- be a normal climatic heating trend, we're thinking about a more pollution-free form of heat.

A week ago on public TV's Maine Watch, the discussion was about wood pellets and how more and more people are buying either the stoves or expensive central heating units that burn wood pellets, according to a spokesman from the wood-pellet industry. This man, who also owns a wood-pellet-manufacturing company, said that as Maineiacs' old furnaces and boilers wear out, they are seeking a more environmentally friendly source of home heat.

He said Maine's vast supply of wood makes that decision easy, wood pellets, which also produce very little pollution because they are so seasoned and then dried further in the manufacturing process.*

I, of course, partly because I'm left handed and can't quite ever think within the commonly-accepted norm, and Dolores are thinking of an electric boiler. People generally scoff, when I say this in their presence, adding that the price of electricity is "way higher" than the cost of even expensive oil or propane.

Not true. I have checked -- with a couple of college professors -- in the past three years, and, using fuel-comparison charts they emailed me, found that electricity is actually less expensive than oil. A little. Of course, each year the price of oil is rising, while the price of electricity is being reduced. (Electricity is more expensive than wood pellets.)

And our state governor, bless his questionable soul and motives, is pushing to expand new pollution-free sources of electricity to help free us from the grip of expensive oil. If he has aimed at one thing that's correct, that is it.

I believe in wind power, just not where it's not appropriate, such as scenic areas where folks have been vacationing and living in for a century, the great forests, mountains, and lakes of Maine. For about ten years, we purchased hydropower -- the kind that Belfast is thinking of developing from a couple of hydroelectric dams built by the late Larry Gleason in the 1970s. The city is thinking of buying those dams.

Now we don't buy pure hydropower, because the company that was selling it to us, First Wind, suddenly and without any notice to us, the customers, stopped selling it. My opinionated guess is that they have stopped selling it, because it is more profitable to obtain government subsidies to develop wind power than earn money by selling hydropower. That's only my simple-minded opinionated guess, of course.

So now we buy from an Auburn company, paying a tad over seven cents a kilowatt hour. This is standard electricity, about 30 percent of which comes from "green" sources. I also am guessing that this 30 percent will increase as new "green" electric sources, such as tidal power and more wind power in appropriate locations -- and even hydropower, which doesn't seem to be in the current popular discussion of "green" power, are developed. In Ellsworth an unused hydroelectric dam and equipment remains in place along the Union River. I wonder how many more of these facilities there are in Maine going unused while we seek clean electric power.

Dolores and I are considering an electric boiler because it seems that more and more electricity will be "green" in the future.

A website I read stated that more and more people are buying these electric boilers for the same reason we're considering purchasing one.**

The boiler can be plumbed into our existing baseboard system.

Of course, we'll miss the noise the oil boiler makes, a comforting sound on a cold winter night. We won't miss the pollution discharges.

Today it's cooler, supposed to be into the high 40s, maybe even 50. The "meteorologist" on TV last night described it as cold.

Cold? I thought the 40s, 50s, and even 60s were normal March temperatures.

Maybe the TV guy (There are, of course, TV women "meteorologists" too, who, by the way, in my opinionated view, are nicer looking than those TV guys and at least as intelligent.) has already become acclimated to global warming.

I haven't.

*When I was a child, I may have spoken like a child, I don't remember. I do remember my parent's heating our suburban house with coal, a large coal boiler for the radiators and a smaller one for domestic hot water. The coal truck driver would place a wooden chute into a cellar window and pour the dirty, dusty stuff into the proper coal bin my father had built in the basement. My father would shovel it into the respective boiler. When oil came along, they were smart enough to change to a better heat source, which happened to be a lot cleaner than coal. Now, most of a century later, it's our turn to be smart enough to be looking for a better heat source than oil, which happens to be a lot cleaner than oil.

**One website stated that electric boilers are smaller than oil boilers, so small that they can be installed in a closet or hung from a wall or a rafter. We have no closets in our basement, but we do have rafters. One site stated that an electric boiler, which can also include heating hot domestic water, maintains the water at 180 degrees. In warmer weather, it stated, some boilers allow you to reduce that temperature to save electricity.

I searched for the cost of one and found just one possible answer, $2,000 for the unit itself. When I first began investigating electric boilers two or three years ago, the cost I received from somewhere was $8,000. If any reader has cost information or knows who sells or installs electric boilers in Maine, I'd sure love to hear from that reader. I filled out two online forms to obtain "quick" quotes. The first one responded that they were sorry, but no one handles electric boilers in our area. The other responded that we would receive up to five phone calls with information costs and other details.

Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@midmaine.com.

Milton M. Gross Copyright 2012