Blowing Hot

 

  I haven't complained about the heat in my previous posts because there's no profit in complaint. The heat of the Southwest is a demon that sucks the energy right out of you. When the temperature hits the nineties and beyond, we climb into our air conditioned cars, or shops or restaurants and don't expose ourselves to the sun until nighttime. And the evenings are only marginally better. It gets nice about three a.m.  Right after breakfast it's time to crank up the a/c again.

  I asked a woman who had grown up in Phoenix how people got anything done in the summer. She said her dad had worked construction and he started at five a.m. and quit before two. She said that he wore a long-sleeved shirt. That was slightly better than absorbing the sun through bare arms. I had noticed this practice among workers fixing streets or collecting trash around Mesa, which hit 100 every day we were there.

  It was extremely hot across Texas and into Arkansas and up into Tennessee and Kentucky and didn't cool off till the hills of West Virginia. And this was late September. This had been going on since late April. Whenever we told someone we were from Minnesota they'd say, “Oh my God! How can you stand the cold? I could never live there." Then I'd bring up their heat. "It's a dry heat," they'd counter. Well our cold is dry. Why do any of us put up with it? They dream of their mild winters. We plug in another heater and wait for the ice to melt. Things could always be worse.

  Back to my Arizona-Massachusetts travelogue. East Texas does not look like the rest of Texas. Stands of tall pines line the highway for miles. It was more of the same in Arkansas, which gave way to fields of corn and cotton. We pulled over at a place selling Arkansas peaches. These peaches didn't look particularly delectable, but since we were here, we bought a basket. They wouldn't be soft enough to eat for several days. Later we pulled over for Arkansas pulled pork. That was worth the stop.

  We ended the day in Humboldt, Tennessee to visit Teresa's sister Faith and got a tour of Teresa's nephew Eric's beautiful pottery studio and gallery. Next morning we headed north into Kentucky. We had no time for visiting historical sites, but when I saw a sign for Lincoln's Birthplace we made a detour. I would do anything for Lincoln and the Founding Fathers.

  We stopped that night in Huntington, West Virginia. Our motel was on top of a hill as is almost everything in West Virginia.  The temperature was temperate and it was pleasant to be outside again. We decided to see a little of backroads West Virginia. That didn't last long. The backroad we chose was narrow and steep sided, winding its slow way through dense woods.  It was beautiful, but we were soon singing the old John Denver song, "Find me a Freeway."

  There is little to tell of the rest of the trip. The mid-Atlantic freeways are frenetic when not crawling. Pennsylvania has the most expensive gas. The Tappen Zee Bridge across the Hudson is now the (Mario) Cuomo Bridge.  Fortunately our son Matt called just as we were looking for the bridge to inform us of the change. Matt and Heather invited us for supper at their place in Hull that evening, bless them. Our babysitting duties would begin the next day. Cool.

Lincoln's Birthplace, in retrospect