All hot and bothered

Arkies rise to the occasion, along with the thermometer

— In case you haven’t noticed, somehow forgotten or are new to the area, Arkansas summers are pretty hot. If you haven’t noticed, you’re probably a victim of thermophilia, a completely made up malady wherein the sufferer cannot feel excessive heat. These lucky people, if they existed, would not be experiencing the fiery heck the rest of us are going through.

On the other hand, if you’ve somehow forgotten what Arkansas summers are like, it’s probably time you were rescued from your cold, dark dungeon.

To those new to the area and experiencing Arkie heat for the first time, welcome!

Who can forget those days of high temperatures past, when people cooked bacon and eggs on the hoods of their cars?

Lingering dimly is the memory of the cold and damp months of winter when we skated around on jolly Christmas layers of ice. A common comment about our fairly severe winter cold was that Mother Nature will surely, later, cut us some slack.

That hopeful theory is this: We get a nasty, cold winter and we’ll dodge a bullet when summer gets here. Old Mother Nature will cut us a break. Right?

Wrong.

We haven’t dodged anything. The bullet came early; there’s been no misfire. It came, relentless and undodge-able.

This heat elucidation is for the entertainment and education of the sun-baked public. And, remember it or not, that heat bullet’s hot, sizzling and ricocheting around. Our summer has already been so hot everyone is walking around like those stumbling-in-the-desert characters in New Yorker cartoons.

In a normal Arkansas year, the toasty span from the end of June to the end of September spreads like a steaming fungus-soaked blanket over the Natural State.

This hellish time we call Arkansas summer (some prefer to add a profane prefix) is incredibly diverse. It ranges from a sticky, humid death shroud early in the season to, eventually, a soul-sucking dryness that reduces human beings to crinkled yellow cornhusks.

Usually, just to get our hopes up, nature will throw in a four- or five-day span of “cool” weather when the temperature drops a couple of degrees. This serves only to tease us, to let our guard down until we get punched in the throat by two more weeks of sun, haze and drought.

It’s similar to gas prices. Prices soar, then drop back. But not to the original price. Still, a drop, any drop, makes us pathetically grateful. It’s the old bait and stick a switchblade in your ribs ploy.

Those who claim not to care about the heat, to be “used to” it, are known as the living dead - heat zombies.

Or liars.

Indeed, some Southerners, usually ones with free time, elevate the searing heat to an ennobling burden, something to proudly endure.

“I do declare; it is certainly a hot one,” they drawl slowly, sitting on the porch and fanning themselves languidly with a newsletter from the country club.

Shortly thereafter they sashay into the house, collapse on the divan and soon begin to shiver from the icy brush of air-conditioned air. Some may experience wrist chafing. Such is nobility.

But not reality.

Anyone who claims they like the heat probably didn’t grow up without air conditioning. (Permit me this pity party: I had no air conditioning growing up. None at home, none at school. So there.)

Lots of us don’t quite get the nobility, especially folks who work outdoors. The heat is probably a lot more bearable while checking the outdoor temperature on your iPhone. For these folks, wrists aren’t the body parts being chafed.

For blue-collar types, summer is a time to suck it up, cut off the sleeves and hope to make it through the day without keeling over. Life experience like this makes you appreciate the world of the air-conditioning arts. Thank God somebody paid attention in shop class.

Nothing will break a person of an antebellum fantasy of heat dignity more than hurtling down a summer freeway, windows down, nursing a car with a busted radiator, the car’s heater blowing full blast in an attempt to keep the engine cool enough to make it to the shop.

The engine needle is pegged at temperatures usually encountered during nuclear fusion experiments. Any odd knock or ping could be the engine beginning to seize, which would leave you on foot, shoes aflame, on a sizzling freeway.

There are odd looks from passing air-conditioned motorists … that red-faced, sweat sheened guy, his swirling hair dried to the moisture level of bottled oregano. Well, he appears to be in some sort of difficulty. They quickly pull away, an extra swirl of heat blown in by their passing.

When you make it to your destination, the moist adrenaline letdown at the radiator shop causes you to excrete an extra layer of hot man-foam.

After weakly tossing your keys to the not-quite-as-hot-as-you mechanic, in his un-airconditioned shop, you hope the friend you called for a lift has the bleeping air cranked up.

The last thing working stiffs want to do is glorify the heat. They may brag about surviving it, but they’re not going to discuss how the heat has shaped the Southern psyche. They’ll pick ice-cold air over hot Tennessee Williams fantasies every time.

Un-air-conditioned survival in Arkansas heat revolves around the fan, specifically the electric box fan. Fancy-pants folks may have oscillating fans, but most have a cadre of box fans in various states of functionality tactically arranged in windows and doorways.

But heat abatement experts know: Amateurs talk tactics while professionals talk logistics. The logistics, having enough fans sucking, enough fans blowing, at opposite ends of the house, are clear. Preferably you are sucking from north to south. West to east could be a fatal mistake.

The fan and its noise becomes so ubiquitous that well after the heat has gone, well into the cool of late fall, some folks need the droning sound to get to sleep.

Arkansas heat makes you understand why aluminum foil covers windows across the state. Its heat-reflecting properties work on satellites and other spacecraft, so it’s a proven science. But it does make the trailer look like an enormous chili-cheese Sonic Coney.

It also makes you puzzle at the inclination of subdivision developers to cut down every tree in a neighborhood known as Shady Acres, reducing the land to a crispy plain best called Death Valley Acres.

Relatively speaking there are many variations of “hot.” A 100-degree day can seem cool compared to the 105 day preceding it. A 90-degree day can be just as brutal. Just add a pinch of humidity; imagine a hot steam iron blasting in your face all day. A 95-degree day can be comfortable if the humidity is low. This is the proverbial “dry heat.” Handy if you’re planning to mummifyan armadillo.

A broad rule of thumb: Upper 80-degree days are “lucky” days, 90-degree days can be quite bearable, high 90s begin to wear thin after a couple of months. Three-digit temps are alarming, especially if the first digit is two or above. Certainly the magical one-zero-zero (that’s 100 for the heat-addled) gets everyone’s attention; anything above that invites delirium and air conditioning repair.

Add in a few weeks duration and the picture of Arkansas heat firms up or, more likely, melts in your hand.

Many old Arkansas hands look to the summer of 1980 as the modern benchmark. Those who lived through it (a band of flakes known as The Old Sweaty Ones) will talk about that cursed season only if pressed. Most people know better than to force this.

During that summer, cars melted, asphalt highways soaked into the ground and rates of spontaneous combustion soared.

So let’s not talk about it. Because no one can stand the sight of grown men or women beading up into a smelly, psychosomatic sweat. Couple that with inarticulate mutterings about vinyl car seats and you’ve got a disturbing situation.

But the good news: So far, summer has always come to an end. In a regular year, around the beginning of September, relief arrives. Temperatures moderate; 103-degree days morph into a 99 -degree chill. Children pour outside, expectations of frigid days in their fevered minds. Smart mothers insist on sweaters or light jackets.

After a month of these tepid days, October brings solid evidence of autumn … temperatures less than 90, cool weather clearly made for down jackets and snow boots. Those trees whose leaves that haven’t shriveled into a forlorn shade of brown have a choice to make: Change colors or literally pull up roots and trot northward to a cooler climate.

Many prefer to stick around and be beautiful. It’s the least they could do.

As most Arkansans know, the most valuable tool for battling the heat is stoicism. Accept your red neck and your trucker tan.

Just take it.

E-mail:

jsykes@arkansasonline.com

Style, Pages 27 on 07/19/2011

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