Wind
There’s a heavy wind this morning. No idea what that means. Just disturbed air going from here to there in a hurry. Meanwhile, we bounce from the 70s at night to near 100 in the day. The grass is dry. The shrubs are dry. Everything is dry. It’s too hot to even eat. Its hard to imagine life in Texas in the days before AC, although our houses when we first moved here in the 60s only had attic fans. It looks like I lived it and thankfully forgot it.
And to think I used to work outside in the summer. I helped build a motel in the summer between my junior and senior year. Although moving lumber around and cleaning up after sheet-rock crews might make my claim that I helped build a motel something of a stretch. Then, after graduation, I spent several years working for Ma Bell outside. It was actually nice, sitting on a platform up in the air under an umbrella, and when I worked nights, I was underground. A mole working in a concrete hole.
Eventually, I went white collar and reserved my outside forays to keeping suburban yards up to snuff, building fences, mowing, pulling weeds, wondering why I never won yard of the month, when my yard was clearly up to snuff. I think it always boiled down to the way I edged. I used my line trimmer, while the winners used the mechanical edgers with spinning blades of steel. Those cut nice lines. I guess it really is the little things that count. I just didn’t want to spend the money. Oh, well. Those were some glory days I didn’t get.
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver's Tale