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the looming texas summer

Even now, Texas Summer looms. It paces 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 prepare themselves mentally. They make sure their small desk fans are in order. They check the backup ice inventories. They make sure water supplies are ready. They knit sweaters. No, that’s the Winter Story. They make out wills and notify next of kin, for Texas Summer is on the way, and, be it known, there is no stopping It. (Unless an asteroid or something hits the earth and tilts stuff, of course.)

Fortunately, there is no dress code at The Company. This will be important when the air conditioning fails, as it will 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, is here. It will be a brief shift. Texas Spring clocks-in, and settles into the casual work. A simply delightful job, to be sure, is Texas Spring’s lot.

Texas Spring is the happy-go-lucky cousin of Texas Summer. It has no expectations. All the Weather family knew without a doubt that Texas Spring would never amount to much. Oh yes, there will always 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 is breezy and easy. Car engines still function during Texas Spring’s shift. People do not burst into flame while running from their car to the office during Spring. Glass does 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 are Texas Summer’s job.

Soon, there will be Company email announcements: “Will 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 will scurry to the Factories under the cover of darkness, ahead of the day, arriving at work long before no person nor beast should ever arise from slumbers, the rest of the world still in their snugs inside the Sandman’s House.

The Employees will hide in the Building, huddling near A/C vents, drinking many Ice Age Brand sodas, for there is 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 will 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 is Celsius!” (Everyone quickly converted with their personal digital assistants, read the number, and oooh’d and ahh’d appropriately.)

“Oh, today at noon, I noticed the bank sign had melted, the bank 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 is all very frightening. It is 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 be, 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 — hang out at bars, drinking brewskies, occasionally knocking out a 90-degree day when the thought occurs to them.

So very special, Texas Summer looms in the distance, busy with preparations, whistling a light-hearted Disney tune. Texas Summer makes a list, checking it twice. It sends 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 smiles to its inferno self, it will be years. Years. Almost as if the Earth is now lazily toppling into Mr. Sun. What fun.

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

Texas Summer just simply loves 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 pays attention when Texas Summer comes to town and clocks-in.

It’s 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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