HEAT WAVE –Day Two–

To be an official “heat wave” we must reach temperatures of ninety or above for three straight days, and that is actually rare in these verdant hills. It is far more common in the Connecticut River Valley to our west, and, in the Merrimack River Valley to our east, the cities of Lowell, Lawrence, Nashua, Manchester and even Concord often swelter, breaking ninety as we enjoy more reasonable eighties. Back in the days of horse drawn carriages, our population swelled in the summer as people fled the “flatlands”, and we had some hotels which were, for those times, impressive. But those people would have been complaining today, as we hit ninety before noon. But worst was the soaring dew point, which hit 76.5 at one point. That may be normal for Atlanta or Houston, but around here such intense humidity knocks people for a loop.

The problem is that northern flesh hasn’t acclimatized to such heat and humidity. If you expose yourself to such extremes, it is somewhat amazing how the physical body adapts. I know this for I conducted experiments on my own northern flesh. Back in my wandering days I spent a summer delivering furniture in South Carolina, and also later I worked in a nail factory where the room I worked was often over a hundred degrees, in the summer. I discovered my flesh adapted.

The problem is that southern flesh also will adapt, and lose its inherent toughness, if exposed to the delightful summer coolness of the north. And this is exactly what they have done, by air conditioning everything in sight. It may be a hundred in Dallas, but everyone looks as cool as a cucumber, except for the brief moments they dash from air conditioned homes to air conditioned cars, or from cars to air conditioned workplaces, taking lunch breaks at air conditioned restaurants. Likely parks have air conditioned Porto-potties. In any case, they aren’t as tough as they used to be, and if the grid crashes due to the idiotic insanity of the Green New Deal, a day of reckoning will arrive. The new South will have to be as tough as the old South.

I got a taste of how they will feel this morning, as my old and northern body hit the brick wall of heat and humidity, which can kill elderly men. (The problem is we can’t sweat; towards the end of his career as a champion Mohamed Ali complained, ” I just can’t break the sweat I used to break.” I suspect it has something to do with testosterone levels.)

However I didn’t hide from the heat under my bed. I exposed myself to it so that what is left of me could acclimatize. I worked in the garden, but made sure to quit when the temperatures soared through the eighties. Also I worked a much smaller garden than I once did. All I did was prepare soil and plant three pepper plants, two brocolli plants, and two cauliflower plants. My garden will not feed the family, and is basically an old man’s toy.

That did get me outside, where I could sniff the wind and scan the sky and take note of things few care about. (For example, Cardinals keep singing even as temperatures soar.)

Then I went indoors and repaired a bathroom door the children at my Childcare had warped by making it into a swing. Then I watched over the kids as they napped, struggling to stay awake in the soporific heat. They konked out, and I nearly did, the evidence being I was starting to drool. To keep myself awake I watched the radar and lightning maps. A storm popped up with amazing speed up on the western side of Concord, but after shooting impressive lightning the storm rained itself out and vanished from the radar in less than thirty minutes.

While the repression of storms is one attribute of a “Heat Dome”, the very fact such a storm could pop is indicative of the fact the “dome” is not atop us, but south of us. Then, as I had a late lunch, I saw storms starting to pop on radar to our west, and even could hear faint thunder. This is indicative we are actually in the “ring of fire” on the northern edge of the “heat dome.” For a time the radar grew impressive, and some growls of thunder were half-way loud.

I sit and type in “New Ipswich” in the above map, and usually such robust storms would mean we would get clobbered, but they were suppressed in a most amazing manner, which seems indicative of the power of the “Heat Dome”. Distant thunder has growled all afternoon and evening, but never drawn close. We did get a smattering of fat raindrops, the sort that raises puffs of dust as they hit without truly wetting the dust.

However it will be a close call, tomorrow, as to whether we can reach ninety for the third straight day. The core of the “Heat Dome” is further south than expected, and the northern side is eroding. If the thunder starts too early tomorrow, we may well only reach 89 degrees, in which case we have failed and our “heat wave” will not be official.

But I did notice an odd thing, as I poked about past history.

I am trying to understand the dynamics of a “Heat Dome,” and still remain mystified, but of course I looked at the most catastrophic “Heat Dome” to ever hit the USA, which occurred in 1936. And I notices an odd thing. It began in the northeast. In June. Then it retrograded west and burned all the crops in the center of the nation, but it first was noticed in the Northeast, even in New Hampshire by bumpkins like me.

(This is my chance to be an Alarmist, without involving CO2.)

LOCAL VIEW –Sixty Longest Days–

I always am struck by the abruptly early daybreaks of May in a slightly absurd way. I feel I am seeing it for the first time. This is absurd because I am sixty-six years old, and logic tells me I have seen it many times before. But perhaps it is made wonderful because northern winters are so lasting, and their nights are so long, and their sunrises are so late, that one especially appreciates the sun so suddenly arising so early. At northern latitudes days get longer with astonishing speed; one week you are driving to work with your headlights on, and a week later you don’t need to turn them on. The transformation is so abrupt that it is hard to be jaded about it. Even an old codger like myself displays a little bit of the wonder children have every day all year.

If your livelihood has anything to do with vegetation, (formerly this involved farming, but now it tends to involve being a “landscaper” and cutting grass), then, hand in hand with the wonder of the abruptly longer days, one is hit by a frenzy, because the same frenzy is felt by vegetation.

Northern plants are very wise, considering they lack brains. They know the growing season is short, and their growth is explosive. Even a non-native plant, transplanted north, demonstrates explosive growth. I once knew a oil worker who had the whim to grow cabbage on the north slope of Alaska. He scraped together a small square of thawed muck from a section of permafrost, planted some cabbage seeds, and then was astounded by how swiftly he had full heads of cabbages. Cabbage is not native to Alaska, but it apparently does well when the sun shines 24 hours a day.

Northern people who deal with plants are made frenetic because they have to deal with frenetic plants. I call it “Farmers Frenzy”, though I have seen it in rich ladies who want to grow roses. It is a state of mind between ordinary ambition and total panic. The northern sunshine seems to state, “Plant now, or forever hold your peace.”

Back in my days as a drifter I once met a fellow-drifter, an old Kansas farmer who, most of the year, was a garrulous old coot who told great tales but preferred the retirement of being a bum to the hard work of farming.

The old farmer deserves more than this synopsis, and I hope to someday write a longer version of this brief biography: He was a fellow who had paid his dues. He had done so in two ways. First, he grew up during the Dust Bowl, part of a tough, tenacious farming-family that refused to let the bank foreclose on their land. Then, as his brothers all gained glory by going off to fight in World War Two, he got stuck back on the farm in Kansas, growing the food that fed the nation. Somewhat accidentally, he made a fortune, but I think he was a little ashamed of making money as his brothers fought fascism. In any case, once his six children were raised, he lost interest in growing wheat, and became a drifter. Likely he was a cause of concern to his family, but he was a blessing to me, because he told the truth about what the Dust Bowl was like. (The media, in calling our current times “the hottest ever”, obviously never took the time to interview such farmers, or to study the temperature records of the 1930’s.)

I knew the fellow for roughly 40 months, and for the most part he was very disinterested in farming, beyond farming being a subject for his reminiscences. In the present tense, he was interested in his retirement. But I did witness him during three springs, and each spring, against his will (it seemed to me) he was hit by Farmer Frenzy. In a situation where, as a drifter, he had no tractor, no seed, and no land, he paced and fretted midst a peculiar urgency, his eyes roaming over the landscape in a hungering way.

For example, on one occasion I saw the old coot, about five-foot-five, take a bunch of far larger Navajo to task. Quite out of the blue he berated their sloth, like a sergeant jawing privates, and stated they should get off their butts and start plowing up some nearby desert sand and plant wheat. The Navajo laughed at him, stating the sand was so dry it couldn’t grow cactus, but he stated the sand was wetter than the dust his family had raised wheat upon in Kansas, during the Dust Bowl, and he then went on to state some rude things about the industry of the Navajo. I cringed, and judged the Kansas fellow’s life-expectancy would be swiftly shortened, but rather than killing the old farmer, the Navajo found him entertaining.

What I took from this experience is that “Farmer Frenzy” is a very real thing, but a thing which one needs to take pains to tame.

On the other hand, “Farmer Frenzy” can be a good thing. It produced the wheat, during World War Two, that defeated Hitler. Yes, guns were important, and troops were important, but if those troops were not fed the guns would have been useless. Kansas farmers deserve credit. Maybe even a monument.

Now I am the age that old farmer was, when I met him on the roadside in 1985, and I remember him as I see myself now experiencing a touch of Farmer Frenzy.

 

       DOUBLE-SONNET: LONGEST DAYS

The sixty longest days are like treasure
Slipping through my fingers. My greed can’t grip
These mercies no man’s muscles can measure
With his farming, though he resolves to whip
Every bean and radish to suck up sunshine,
To command corn to bask in every ray,
Demand bumpers make reaping a fun time,
And stays awake all hours of each long day,
And scorns vacations, snubs all thought of leisure,
Sternly seeks to seize the moment’s value;
To with miser-fingers fondle treasure;
To tell the summer, “I’ll corral you”,
Too soon it passes, like lovely lasses
Getting old, and makes us wind up asses.

But this year I’ll be different. I’ll work
As hard in the hot summer days, but I’ll
Not be such a crab, nor be such a jerk,
And I’ll greet every ache with a smile.
I’ll not care so much about the weighed results
Nor rue the way time goes scooting by.
Even if my harvest is but insults
I’ll give my new philosophy a try.
You see, it seems to me I’ve been too prone
To seeing harvest as a sort of cement.
I wished to freeze joy, make her be my own,
But then I groaned and wondered where joy went.
Now I’m content to watch summer slip by.
My days too grow short. Where joy goes, go I.