Growing up in Corpus Christi, TX involved a long and tedious relationship with heat. At about 4 every afternoon it comes in waves, borne by the humidity, and it washes over everything in a not water-like way at all. It washes over you like thick wool in a rain forest. I would get out of school at 3:30. The heat didn’t take my breath away; it was more like having a sock straight out of the dryer stuffed into your gullet. Breathing just stopped. I got sleepy every day in the afternoon. It is possible too that I was sleepy because of a 200 gm sugar load at lunch. Very possible. The combination of the sugar and heat was like the junkie’s speedball mix of cocaine and heroin. The come-down is double bad. No soft and gooey rocket ride up happens without a price on the return trip.I digress, but not really. The heat was like that. It baked everything into itself. It took my will, every day.I spent a summer working as a tar roofer in South Texas. The buckets of tar had to be carried from points a to b and c etc. That was my job. Looking around there was not a better job. Moving up did not change things relative to the heat. Someone had to work the molten tar, which I assume required no input of energy since the air itself was molten hot. Someone had to spread the tar, someone to add gravel, someone even to stand around, rooted in the melting world and watch. Supervise, they called it. This person had not even the distraction of movement. Anyway, after that summer I applied myself somewhat more to my studies and got clear about going to college one way or another.
This photo taken in the “heat” of the day in Moro, OR. I don’t know why, but it reminded me of how I felt growing up in the swelt of Corpus Christi. (Swelt is a word, by the way, although I am taking some liberties in its usage, I believe. It is normally a verb, believe it or not, for any of you sentence diagraming nerds out there. It means either to die or to faint or to overpower as with heat, as in the sun in South Texas swelted me.) However Moro’s heat of the day is just a pleasant and comforting and dry and nourishing warmth. Things, like gardens, grow in Moro’s heat. In Corpus Christi, the heat kills. If the heat doesn’t kill you, the wind blows your brain into moist dust devils of disorientation, but that is another story.
This story hit home with me because today was a sweltering day in South Texas. I went for a walk after work and couldn’t wait to get home to take a shower. My clothes felt like they were glued to my body.
It’s still that way…trust me.