Stop the Heat!

It’s my annual summer rant! 

I am allowed one weather rant per season. And it sure is time for my summer heat rant. Are you kidding me. . .100-degrees plus!?! No!

Daily heat warnings from the U.S. Weather Service? No!

A heat index that makes one feel they are entering a sauna when leaving an AC building? No!

My greatest challenge during the day is to get from one air conditioned building to the next as quickly as possible. I’m walking much faster lately.

During this kind of Oklahoma summer, the most exercise I get is turning the page on the latest book I’m reading while sitting on the couch. I took on “To Kill a Mockingbird” again (for the fourth time) last week. Amazing author Harper Lee understood a southern summer. She relates how southern women, er, ladies, deal with a southern summer in Alabama– THREE baths a day.

“I can relate!” I told friends. They admitted to at least two cold showers a day, and sometimes more. My water bill has increased alarmingly.

To help ease the heat, I turned to John Grisham writing about fall in Mississippi. I’m much cooler now.

Wondering how other authors wrote about summer heat I searched the internet, which does not generate a lot of sweat, oops, that should be southern perspiration. 

First up, another one of my favorite authors, who has a bit of a hometown tie courtesy of grapes. That’s John Steinbeck.

He wrote, “What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”

Hum, maybe Mr. Steinbeck didn’t spend a summer in Sallisaw, OK, before writing “Grapes of Wrath.”

And there’s more authors, who are more to my point.

-Walter Winchell: “It’s a sure sign of summer if the chair gets up when you do.”

-James Dent: “A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.”

Me: Exactly! I actually had a couple weeks of a perfect summer day, and no lawn mower, earlier this year. It was heaven.

-Anonymous: “Wow. I’m really enjoying this 100-degree plus weather, said no one, ever!”

-Anonymous: "I’m glad it is finally hot enough to complain about how hot it is.” NOT!

-Jane Austen: “What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.”

Me: Brilliant woman. She writes so well about sweating and heat-destressed hair!

-How hot is it?

- The cows are giving evaporated milk.

-The chickens are laying hard-boiled eggs.

-I saw a dog chasing a cat and they were both walking.

-Hot water now comes out of both taps.

Me: Unfortunately true at my house.

-You burn your hand just opening your car door.

Me: Again, unfortunately true in Sallisaw this summer.

-You can say 110 degrees without fainting.

Me: Yes, I faint in 110 degree heat. It’s downright embarrassing.

-You learn a seat belt makes a pretty good branding iron.

Me: Yep. Happened to me.

-The temperature falls below 95 degrees, and you feel a bit chilly.

Me: Not really.

-The four seasons are tolerable, hot, really hot and ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Me: And I’ve already said that.

OK. So it rained on us last week, and cooled off a bit as thunderstorms blew through. So it followed. . .

-Best observation of the day by Bob Hope: “If I’m on the golf course and lightning starts, I get inside fast. If God wants to play through, let Him!”

And then there is the final observation, which I noted many years ago, and still makes me a bit sad.

-“Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well.” George R.R. Martin

Yes, summer will end soon, the cooler fall weather will make us feel better, then the joys of the Christmas holidays will perk us up considerably. But after that, gloomy winter lurks, and we will be wishing it were summer again.