Summer in Alabama ~ my column from Sunday's paper

Things change as you age and this lesson came into sharp focus this week as I prepared for a workshop down in Carrolton, Alabama.

The weatherman promised the temps would be lower this coming week, but apparently, the

mercury hasn’t gotten the memo yet because it was hotter than Lucifer in latex.

The books, handouts, and equipment for the sessions are stored in plastic boxes the size of Army footlockers. I realized these things weren’t going to load themselves, so I got an early start to beat the heat. But I was too late.

Loading the SUV was a chore. By the time I finished, it felt as if I’d showered with my clothes on. Pausing to wipe sweat from my eyes, I glanced at the reflection in the back glass. It looked as if crystal beads were rolling down my face and neck.

The two-hour drive to the workshop in East Alabama was almost to the Mississippi State Line.

Cruising down the two-lane roads gave me a lot of time to reflect. I remember that hot summers didn’t use to bother me.

My first job after graduating from high school was with the state highway department. One of my duties on the road crew was to inspect asphalt in August. We had to ensure the contractors weren’t cutting corners and spreading the asphalt too thin in places.

This job rotated through the younger members of the crew, but it usually fell to the member who had made the crew chief mad. Afterward, my boss told me that I looked like a mirage standing there in the rising heat waves. It was brutal work, but I loved hot weather back then.

This week’s workshop was over around 3 p.m., and the SUV had been sitting in the hot sun for three hours. The inside was as hot as a kiln, so I cranked the AC up to super-duper cool.

Before hitting the road home, I sent a text update to my lovely spouse. She replied back to be careful and watch for school buses. Leaning forward, I tapped my head on the padded steering wheel and thought to myself, “Why are we torturing kids by sending them back to school in summer?”

Her advice was timely because approaching a curve near Poplar Springs, I glimpsed a yellow bus with flashing caution lights about to offload a herd of kids. With backpacks slung over their shoulders, they dashed off in every direction. Some of them looked a little wilted from the heat.

The Farmer’s Almanac says that last year’s warm winter was an anomaly and that we can expect colder weather beginning in November. Jilda was almost giddy this morning as she read this factoid aloud.

She’s no fan of hot weather and the older I get, the more I’ve come around to her way of thinking.

We both know people who want to wear shorts and tank tops to Walmart year around. These people whine when it gets chilly in January. I sometimes wonder why these folks don’t move to South Florida or Jamaica.

Jilda joked that she was going to buy a stun gun and if she heard one person complain about the cold weather she was going to zap them. I told her that sounded a little wacky, but summer in Alabama does that to both of us.