How hot is it Johnny?

We are all perfectly aware of the fact that it is hot outside. Then again, it is the middle of July. What else would it be? Quite frankly gentle readers, I think we’d have a lot more to worry about if it was cold outside.
Enduring infernal summer temperatures and humidity is part of the basis of Arkansas citizenship. Personally I think it would be a wonderful idea to institute an aptitude test for people desiring to move to Arkansas from some northern area. You’d have to be able to prove your ability to simultaneously swat a mosquito and poor a glass of lemonade without spilling any, all with sweat running down you forehead into your eyes before we’d let you in. Then if you started complaining about the heat before the temperature reached 90 degrees you’d be deported to Utah. Why Utah? Because then you’d come to understand what real heat is. Nothing like spending a little time in the desert to make you appreciate deciduous trees.
And just how hot is it? It’s hot enough for comparisons to start being made. I’ve heard several people lately make references to the great heat wave of 1980. Most of us have a bitter place in our memories for that highly unpleasant summer. It was a time of mixed emotions for me. My poor wife had to suffer through the final stages of pregnancy before our younger son was born in June of that year. Although I have no personal first hand knowledge of the phenomenon, I am informed by reliable sources that there are few things more miserable than being seven or eight months pregnant during a sweltering summer. If you ever have the masochistic desire to have your eyelids pulled back over the top of your head, just walk up to an obviously pregnant woman in July and ask her, “Is it hot enough for you?” I can virtually guarantee that her reaction will be both immediate and violent. In fact, the questioner will be lucky to live through the experience. There is something about preparing for an imminent child birth that makes a woman both edgy and extraordinarily strong. Some sort of survival mechanism I suppose.
Anyway, getting back to our original question , how hot is it, the most commonplace reference is “frying an egg on the sidewalk.” This is not all that difficult to do. At least not in terms of getting the egg to fry. Turning it over is another question altogether. It just can’t be done without either breaking the yolk, or getting gravel in the egg white. Certainly makes for an interesting challenge though, provided you can withstand the very worried looks you’ll get from everybody who finds out you did such a thing.
Every now and then, you;l hear someone say, It’s so hot the asphalt is melting.” This actually happened in Texas a while back, although it was more a case of poor grade asphalt;t on a new highway than it was the extreme heat. I remember seeing pictures of the pavement sticking to tires and coming up . Sounds repulsive doesn’t it?
I also remember the disgusted looks on the faces of the people who got out of their cars to see what the problem was. Talk about yucky!
There was a time when I was a young fella when I spent a good deal of time around hot asphalt. I worked for the public works department of my hometown of Memphis. And I can tell you for a fact that there is nothing you want less to come in contact with your skin than hot asphalt. It doesn’t just burn, it grabs ahold and stays there, sort of like a brother-in-law who refuses to get a job and move out of the house.
It’s about as much fun to deal with as an irate cotton mouth. I had one of those recently too. Of course to be honest about it, the snake wasn’t really irate until I hit him in the head with a rake as I was evicting him from my carport. The reptile found that offensive. Here he was quietly hunting toads beside my back door when this big oaf comes up and starts acting rude. The snake didn’t want to get out in the sun either. He’s past all those concerns now. He’s wherever snakes go when they shuffle off this mortal coil. I didn’t want to kill him you understand, but I have small grandchildren, and as we all know grandchildren and venomous snakes don’t mix.
Besides, my son Nathaniel, the one who was born during the heat wave of 1980, insisted the snake had to die. I think the heat had made him a bit hostile too.