My free one-week membership in a suburban gym expired Sunday without my having tried out either the sauna or the steam room.
I had passed them each day on my way from the treadmill to a poolside lounge chair, and had contemplated going inside to roast myself a bit more.
Instead of roasting, though, I opted for pickling, headed outdoors and ordered myself an adult beverage. It came in slushee form with a tiny blue umbrella. I spilled some on the sidewalk, and it hissed like the sauna I'd just skipped. I needed the tiny blue umbrella for shade and was light-headed enough to try it.
Hot enough for ya?
Thirty people must have asked that question Tuesday, except they asked my sister, not me. Still panting from my week at the gym, I wasn't brave enough to leave the air-conditioned house. My sister is, and she says "y'all" instead of "yinz," causing Pittsburghers to assume she's an expert on summer heat.
She is part of the Southern Invasion. First her, now Cracker Barrel. These invaders may be bringing the insufferably hot weather with them. She moved here from South Carolina last summer, and I don't need to remind you that the winter was unusually mild and the spring early.
Now Cracker Barrel has been approved as the first tenant of the Knockout development on Route 228. It's a Tennessee-based chain, all folksy and Southern. We always eat there during our annual vacation at the beach, where it is hot. When you have to wait for a table -- which is pretty much every time you go -- you get to relax in one of the wide porch's dozens of high-backed rockers.
Rocking chairs stir up a breeze. The breeze softens the effect of so much heat and light reflecting off the acres of concrete that surround any popular chain restaurant, and that also surround Cranberry.
Come to think of it, Cranberry may be causing our onerous local heat wave simply by being its concrete-laden self.
About a decade ago, I saw a list of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. This was back when the 20th century was the last word in modernity -- the cutting edge in time. Second on the list -- after the computer, of course -- was the air conditioner.
As a Midwesterner accustomed to frigid winters and blistering summers, I was eager to share this fascinating insight with my best friend. "They say it did more to change modern life than anything besides the computer."
"Well," and here I'm pretty sure she sniffed, "I suppose it improved life for you guys in the South but I don't see how it mattered that much to anyone else." I'm from Kansas City, Mo., the "Heart of the Midwest," but to her, anything that isn't New England is the South.
As I should have said, but didn't, she quite missed the point. Air conditioning didn't just make living more comfortable for us guys in the South; it made lots more of "us guys" move there. Air conditioning caused the great Southern migration, made megalopolises like Atlanta and Houston possible and radically altered America's population map. Air-conditioning is why Florida has 23 representatives. Air-conditioning is why George Bush is president.
That's the kind of reasoning you get from me when it's this hot. Addled. We're heat-addled.
Hot enough for ya?
My sister says, no, y'all are just wimps. Down South, it seems, they have heat days instead of snow days. Where she used to teach, the school year opens in early August when temperatures still soar above 100. In the older schools with no air-conditioning, kids get early dismissal.
She tells me such things and then collapses on the sofa and fans herself. The sofa happens to be in my living room, which is Up North, a location currently as sultry as the clime she forsook.
'Cause right now, as the saying goes, it's not just the heat, it's the humidity. Walking out of an air-conditioned building is like walking into a wall of wet cotton. Your glasses steam up. The water condenses on your body and mingles with the sweat and everyone's clothes stick and pretty soon you're living out a play by Tennessee Williams.
Here's the nation's oldest weather-related joke: "Don't like the weather in [insert your state's name here]? Just wait a minute -- it'll change." Ha ha. If only it were true.
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