I just took Athena the Wonder Dog out for her midnight constitutional and the heat just bored right into us. At midnight here in Northern Virginia, the temperature is 85 degrees and the feels-like is 90.
Ninety degrees! At MIDNIGHT. In Northern Virginia.
Jeepers.
When did the dog days of summer follow so closely on the back-paws of Independence Day?
And how hot is it where you are?
Back in the day, I was a reporter at the Dallas Morning News. We had a spell one summer when it did not go below 90 degrees for something like 40 days. Not even at night. And heaven knows, not during the day.
I had a rattletrap car of a make that never should have been made that had a habit of overheating whenever it was hot . . . and the only way to get it to chug the 30 miles from my home to the office at the News was to turn on the heater. Yup; I drove 30 miles twice a day in 100+ degree temperatures (ok, 90+ on my way home, because I worked the night shift) in a car that would not run without the heater on. I solved this by hanging my clothes on a hanger and driving both ways in a bathing suit. I was young. Don’t ask.
When I was a kid in NY, we lived in a 1920's townhouse without air conditioning. No one had air conditioning where we lived and most of the time (in those pre-Global warming days when we built snow forts from December ‘til March) it would have been a ridiculous luxury. But I remember one night, in the stifling heat of my third floor bedroom, when I had to sleep on a slick vile vinyl air mattress because my parents’ friends were in town with their kids and I had had to give up even the clammy sheets of my own bed to company. My parents and their friends (and my brother and their sons) went to a Yankees game and their daughter (who got the roasting clammy-sheeted bed) and I had tried (futilely) to sleep. The game went into extra innings and then the boys had to hang around to get Mickey Mantle’s autograph. They all got home at 2:30 a.m., by which time I had almost melted. My Mom never went to a baseball game again.
In the early 1980s, I lived in a tiny walkup studio apartment in Manhattan that had one (1) window that faced onto an airshaft. The apartment (which measured approximately 18 shoe boxes long by 12 shoe boxes wide as the crow walks, and which cost half my take-home pay) had no air conditioning. I worked at a newspaper then, too, and the good thing was that the newspaper had to have the a/c running all night to keep the (then recently installed) computer equipment from overheating. I either (a) doused myself in cold water and slept on the floor of my apartment (not a big step up from the futon) OR (b) slept on a sofa at the office and went home to change and then came back to work. I was not alone. A lot of the copykids and clerks slept in the newsroom to stay cool. I don't know whether management ever knew this. (I do remember my boss saying, "Why don't you buy an air-conditioner?" and thinking, "on $212.80 a week?")
The second worst hottest event ever:
The Dallas Morning News is only a short walk from the Convention Center where the Republican National Convention was held in 1984. (Dallas in August? Seriously? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA) We had a shuttle bus . . . but I got impatient one afternoon and decided to walk. It was 108 degrees and I passed out on the sidewalk. Smooth, I know.
The first worst hottest event ever:
Waiting in line in the asphalt-covered parking lot where one waits in line to visit Graceland in Memphis . . . on a Fourth of July . . . amidst 14 Elvis impersonators. On the other hand, hearing B.B. King that night, while eating the best barbeque in the history of the universe . . . well . . .
And while I’m sitting here, complaining, I’d like us all to remember two groups of people tonight:
(1) All those who are sweltering in this awful heat without benefit of air-conditioning or a fan – or a job or a way to pay for electricity . . . this is disgraceful in this rich country. Can we please get our priorities straight and extend unemployment benefits and do real things to get this economy moving again . . . I don’t want the Dads and Moms comforting their hot children tonight to have to give up hope.
(2) Our soldiers, sailors, Marines, Airmen and National Guard sweating it out in Iraq and Afghanistan tonight. It’s 111 degrees in Baghdad and near 100 degrees throughout Afghanistan. And they have to wear heavy armor. Remembering our soldiers who died of heat stroke.
Where you are? Just how hot is it?