The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
When the weather wizards on TV declare “Memorial Day is the beginning of summer,” we Tucsonans smile, roll our eyes and politely nod because we know a season can’t “begin” if it never ends, and as sure as there are death and potholes any fool can see summer never ends. Winter here is, at best, a visiting breeze, a fraud, a seasonal sham, a meteorological hoax — and autumn? A rumor to be forgotten.
We’re good humored about summer because exposure to the sun has baked our brains into tiny charred maniacal raisins. For laughs, some raisin-brained Tucsonans have been know to put on sweaters in January. We keep our sweaters next to our galoshes and ice scrapers in our entryway closets because, like we tell every newcomer, “you never know. We could get a blizzard.”
Last Blizzard I got was at a Dairy Queen in Gila Bend in July of 1973.
Any summer dweller worth his sunscreen who hears the radio say “Tucson hit the 100-degree mark today” will tell you Tucson doesn’t “hit” the “100-degree mark” as much as it hits us, whomps us good, landing like an acme anvil on our Wiley Coyote heads. Before you can say “heatstroke”, as Yosemite Sam would say, our “biscuits are burning.”
When the obvious is announced, “Tucson is heading into triple digits,” we hold our defiant single-digit response up to the sun and carry on. Because we like summer. We like the heat. We like having raisin brains.
“We’ll be seeing above-normal temperatures again,” says the weather wizard. Really? Isn’t that every daily headline for the foreseeable future?
“ABOVE-NORMAL TEMPERATURES AGAIN,
JUST LIKE YESTERDAY AND YEAR BEFORE,
GLOBAL WARMING SUSPECTED”
When visitors say, “It’s hot as hell here” I tell them they could not be more wrong. It’s hotter. Which is why we Tucsonans have little climatological apprehension about ending up in hell, much to the disappointment of our moral superiors.
“This is hell?”
“Welcome, sinner, to your eternal torment.”
“Can someone turn down the AC? I’m chilly.”
“What?”
“‘It’s chilly. I’m from Tucson. Trust me, this is not hot. Not ‘summer’ hot.”
“Silence, Foul Pestilence! No place is hotter than hell!”
“Try Speedway and Country Club in a month. I’m not even breaking a sweat here. Is it this cool year-round?”
“Into the ‘Lake of Fire’ with you!”
“Oooh. A ‘Lake of Fire’. Let me tell you about Tucsonans, lobster boy. We love heat. We like to soak in flaming hot tubs filled with salsa. We gulp down jalapeño peppers like grapes, breathe fire and complain that it’s not hot enough in June. Tell your manager, what’s his name, ‘Lucy’—”
“Lu-ci-fer.”
“Well, you tell Lucifer I’m not impressed. What you call ‘hot’ we Tucsonans would call ‘brisk.’ Like a pleasant sunset in July. My friends back home’ll be jealous! Look. I got goosebumps!”
“Taste my branding iron!”
“Been there, done that. Summer of 2019. I sat right down on my white hot seatbelt buckle which I’d left sitting there in the sun when I got out of my truck to pick up a solar-powered sauna in June . Scarred my biscuits. Want to see?”
“No. You’re all checked in. Go.”
“Great. I’m still freezing here, pal. You got a sweater I could borrow?”
“Next, please.”
“Don’t you keep any sweaters around, just in case? I’ll bet down here you keep them where all my friends back up in Tucson keep their mittens and their ice scrapers. Hall closet, right?”
“Our gift shop carries sweaters. They come in burlap, steel wool. Next to the ‘down’ escalators. They also carry jalapeño chewing gum, toy pitchforks, rubber snowballs and the foulest of abominations, ‘Best Puns of 2020.’”
“Got any hot cocoa? I’m catching a cold. I am shivering.”
“Check out the lava lamps. Real lava! Nothing says ‘Hello from hell’ like a red-hot lava lamp.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Too late.”
“Got any postcards that say ‘Hell! Compared to Tucson in June, It’s Heaven’?”
“Be on your way! Heed the wails of the condemned burning in our fiery depths!”
“Is that what I’m hearing? A bunch of whiners crying about a little heat? Who are they? Heathens from Wisconsin? Unitarians from Seattle? Big babies.”
We good-humored Tucsonans are a hardy people, our souls are heated and hammered into a strong shape by the fierce forge of summer. We apply our sunscreen with a paint roller and believe “that which does not incinerate us makes us stronger.” When the sidewalks roll up and the streets are empty we raisin-brained summer-loving saps will savor our due, the slowing of life’s pace. And I, in the shade of my porch, will enjoy my lava lamp and dream of blizzards in Gila Bend.
