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the looming texas summer

Even now, Texas Summer loomed. It paced in the distance ahead, impatient to begin its shift, a fiery ripple of heat waves, collecting Itself, preparing to park and work hard for many months, baking the Texas landscape, cooking the hapless people of the land to a right proper brimming, bubbling, savory stew.

The Employees prepared themselves mentally. They made sure their small desk fans were in order. They checked the backup ice inventories. They made sure water supplies were ready. They knit sweaters. No, that’s the Winter Story. They made out wills and notified next of kin, for Texas Summer was on the way, and, be it known, there was no stopping It. (Unless an asteroid or something hit the earth and tilted stuff, of course.)

Fortunately, there was no dress code at The Company. This would be important when the air conditioning failed, as it would several times, per tradition, in the Dog Days. (This never happens during the Cat Days.)

Yet at the moment, Texas Spring, that brief glimpse of weather happiness in Texas, that fleeting moment of Easy Days, was here. It would be a short shift. Texas Spring clocked-in, and settled into the casual work. A light, breezy job, to be sure, was Texas Spring’s lot.

Texas Spring was the happy-go-lucky cousin of Texas Summer. It had no expectations. All the Weather family had known Texas Spring wouldn’t amount to much. Oh yes, there’d be the occasional Violent Weather, maybe a tornado or two here, a flash flood or two there, and yet, nothing as spectacular as Texas Summer’s shift.

Texas Spring’s tour of duty was light. Car engines still operated during Texas Spring’s shift. People did not burst into flame while running from their car to the office in Spring. Glass did not melt and slide down walls, collecting into glassy pools upon the parched earth, fooling starving, thirsty small animals looking for water. (Sadness.) All of those events were Texas Summer’s job.

Soon, there would be Company email announcements: “Would the owner of the light blue truck, license 441-WJK, please apply a fire extinguisher to your vehicle before the tires fuse to the parking lot. The last mess took days to clean up.”

Soon, the Workers would scurry to the Factory in the cover of darkness, ahead of the day, arriving at work before no person nor beast should ever arise from slumbers, the rest of the world still snuggled in at the Sandman’s House.

The Employees would hide in the Building, huddling near A/C vents, drinking many Ice Age Brand sodas, for there was no Big Name Brand machine here, surely a Goodness, not a Badness, and a blessing to those misguided soda drinkers, may Heaven Have Mercy on Their Souls, for Ice Age soda is the official drink of Heaven. (Next to Yellow Rose Brewery’s Wildcatter’s Stout, of course, a goodly brew out of San Antonio, back in the day.)

During the entire Texas Summer shift, the temperature would dominate all conversations, replacing, even football and basketball, as in:

“Hey! The bank sign today on the way to work said 143-degrees! And that was Celsius!”

Everyone quickly converted with their personal digital assistants, read the number, and oooh’d and ahh’d appropriately.

“Oh, today at noon, I notice the bank sign had melted, the bank was afire, and there were fire trucks everywhere!”

“Big deal. On the way home I noticed the fire trucks had all fallen into a giant sink hole created from street buckling and water main failures!”

To those hapless souls who had journeyed from the milder Summer domains, this was all very frightening. It was especially horrific to those who lived under the crushing Texas Summer’s fiefdom for years, moved away, and moved back from lands where Summers barely kept a job. No promotions for such Summers in those realms, since Winters had the Union locked down.

In those faraway places, and a motley crew of Summers they were, scorned by Texas Summer, scoffed at by the New Mexico Summer, yet loved by the people of their lands, the milder Summers — a laid-back yet happy bunch — hung out at bars, drinking brewskies, occasionally knocking out a 90-degree day when the thought occurred to them.

So very special, Texas Summer loomed in the distance, busy with preparations, whistling a light-hearted Disney tune. Texas Summer had made a list and was checking it twice. It sent CYA email to Mr. Sun to line up some very extra special days. Nahhh, Texas Summer thought to itself. It hit the delete key and changed the word “days” to “months.” Soon, Texas Summer smiled to its inferno self, it will be years. Years. Almost as if the Earth was toppling into Mr. Sun. What fun.

Thinking about the work ahead, Texas Summer smiled a ferociously bright smile, which caused three nearby forests to explode into flames and a small pond to bubble.

Texas Summer just simply loved the job, the overtime, and especially that everyone — the entire population from the Guv, to the Texas Lege, to Texas Bidness Movers and Shakers, to all the rest, rich or poor, young or old, suave or clueless, no matter what their Team Loyalties — each and everyone definitely absolutely completely paid attention when Texas Summer came to town and clocked-in.

It was a cool job.

Scribed for the weekly blip while turning down the a/c on March 21, 1998, as the Texas Summer loomed. Back when this was written, no one (except for scientists, apparently) had a clue how hot Texas Summer was going to get. Since then, grow zones have shifted up, and glaciers are melting at a faster rate today than scientists predicted not so long ago in 2013. And yet, it’s still possible, so far, to get an ice-cold beer in an air-conditioned Texas bar.

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