By Neal Wooten
With gas prices the way they are, I haven’t driven my 4X4 truck much in the last year. I’ve been driving my little Chevrolet Aveo. That changed two weeks ago, however, and now I’ve driven my truck every day. Why? Because the air in the Aveo is cool, but the air in the truck is cold.
Man, it’s hot. I had planned this weekend to run new lights on my trailer. I was out there for all of ten minutes and was sweating so much I couldn’t even see. My eyes were burning. That’s one drawback to being bald. (Not the only one, I assure you.) But there’s nothing to stop the sweat from rolling straight off your noggin.
I often think back to my childhood and wonder how we did it. Our house didn’t have air conditioning at all, not even a window unit. At best, we had a box fan sitting in the open doorway. Our bedrooms didn’t even have that. If the power were to go off tonight, there’s no way I would be able to sleep. I’d probably just drive around, in the truck, of course, until it came back on.
When we were kids though, we played all day in the sun and slept all night in the heat and never gave it any thought. That makes me wonder. Is the planet really getting warmer, or were we just tougher back then? Or is it a little of both? Or was it that we never had air conditioning, so we simply didn’t know what we were missing?
In every picture I can find of me as a kid in the summer, I’m not wearing a shirt and have the darkest tan. I can remember going to the creek or coal mines to swim almost every day during the summers. I remember us playing softball and other games during the hottest part of the day. I remember how happy we were to get a sudden downpour because it would drop the temps briefly.
But I watch the news and see it’s not just here in the Deep South. There are places from the Rockies to the Pacific Northwest that are setting records with their heat waves. Some areas in Utah and Colorado were hitting temps around 130 degrees and maintaining it all week. I can’t even imagine. And, of course, the heat is wreaking havoc on wildfires.
It really puts a damper on things. A friend called this weekend and said, “Hey, come on over. We’re having a backyard cookout.” I told him I couldn’t because I had other plans. When he asked what plans, I answered, “Staying inside in the air conditioning.”
