July meanderings

How hot is it?

Tucson has a lot in common with Tatooine in July.

They’re both hostile, hot, inhospitable, desert worlds. Tatooine has other worldly cantinas full of scavengers, smugglers, and some bad ass looking droids and has two suns. Tucson has other worldly cantinas full of scavengers, smugglers, and some bad ass looking droids and has one sun.

Some believe “Endless summer” is a documentary about a surfing. They’re wrong. “Endless summer” is your grandkid's weather forecast. Your grandkid's weather forecast is already here. Our “excessive heat warning” alerts are so excessive they will soon become known as “commonplace heat warning alerts”.

“Please be aware a commonplace heat warning will be in effect until the glaciers are puddles. Wear a hat.”

In the relentless heat of July all but those delusional dipsticks denying the reality of climate change can see a grim future where the Colorado River runs dry, the human species is decimated by a terrible plague of chapped lips and the homes of celebrities are pushed into the oceans to be used as artificial reefs.

Still others can see an even more foreboding world where Foothills Mall developers will announce the demolition of their new “outdoor downtown” center so it can be replaced with an enclosed climate-controlled mall.

I’m sure it’s just the heat stroke talking but I expect Baja to become our 51^st state someday and by the following year I expect the state of Baja to disband and rejoin the state of Arizona after no one shows up at the organizational meeting scheduled for July at The Shanty because everyone assumed it was at the Himmel Park pool. Take it from me they missed a good time partying with some freaky looking scavengers, smugglers, and some bad ass looking droids.

Many years ago, I was asked by a fan, Miss Erma Bombast, of Three Points, Arizona if I had any summer survival tips to offer.

I told Erma my tips were all burned off when I forget to coat them with SPF 100 sunscreen. Despite that horrible condition, being swarmed by bees and vultures in the midday sun, possessing a sun-fried brain that resembled a raisin bouncing around inside a hollow coconut and barely sufficient strength to lift a life-saving margarita to my chapped flaking lips, this sun seasoned Tucsonan dedicated his desiccated self to enumerating some tips before sipping one more sip of Reposado.

Wear popsicles in your pants pockets.

If you must go out in your car midday drive nude.

Be wary of seat belt buckles left sitting in the sun.

If you can drive, head south, stop at Antarctica. It’s cool there. At least for one more century.

Never declare,” it’s hot!” aloud among any summer residents of Tucson. Summer residents of Tucson can be a surly lot, or as my wife Ellen expresses it so neatly about yours truly around mid-July, “What happened to Mr. ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’?”

If you say, “Hopping horny toads, it’s hot!” among any of us you will be greeted with a lethargic chorus of,” How hot is it?”

It's so hot the Sabino Canyon glacier started receding. It's so hot my evaporative cooler evaporated.  It's so hot the native spotted ferruginous penguins have begun migrating south.

It's so hot that when my wife said it's 110, I didn't know if she was talking about the temperature or answering a friend’s question about my expiration age. It's so hot I saw an environmentalist hugging an air conditioner. It's so hot I saw a thunderhead about to rain steam. It’s so hot Finger Rock is flipping the cosmos off. It’s so hot that I just saw a Quail with a sign that said, "Will work for shade”. It’s so hot I couldn’t think of anymore “it’s so hot” jokes.

There’s no better time to change out some melted popsicles in my pants for some fresh chilly willies and to answer more questions such as “what causes hot summers?” (Good question, Dave, you sly poser of fake questions.) Every year at this time the earth moves 1 gazillion miles closer to sun until, according to NASA scientists, the sun is approximately 3 feet from your face. The sun has very bad breath that is exceedingly hot.  Here’s another tip: If Mr. “Center of the Solar System” knocks at your front door don’t answer. Draw the blinds, stream “Ice Station Zebra” and turn up the volume, until he goes away or turns into a red giant super nova and ends it all or October arrives.

Another question commonly asked of me is what happens to the wildlife here in this heat? Javelina leave for San Diego, Bobcats head for Balboa Park, Kangaroo rats burrow to Australia and because lizards can’t afford to travel, they crawl under rocks, displacing hundreds of cartoonists annually.

I’m also asked, by the disembodied voices in my head, how did ancient people’s make it through the summers here?

Some theorize that the ancients survived the summers by hanging out at the frozen food sections of their favorite grocery stores and fanning themselves with prickly pear pads. What’s more interesting is how they got here. The first settlers came across the Bering Strait during the summer months. During the winter months they wintered in Del Webb retirement villages, where Del invented the Margarita and the ice pick. In the 11th century a Hohokam inventor proposed weaving above-ground swimming pools out of reeds that the desert people could cool off in while bobbing about on boogie boards made by Martha Ortiz. The Hohokam eventually moved on when a philosopher chief pointed out that that the woven pool concept would never hold water.

Where should you escape to for the summer?

This is the season for visiting the Mogollon rim. Pronounced muggy-yawn It’s rarely muggy yet it is sufficiently sublime to inspire a contented yawn.  Little towns like Spit Whittle, Cracker’s Knob, Pine Nozzle, Chum Bucket and Whiny Hollow dot the mountains like knotholes on granny’s outhouse door between these charming villages Elks and bears sell their berries at produce stands. In every rural berg Andy Griffith’s ghost haunts the diner, Floyd the barber has gone fishing and the Trump Merch Store is open 24/7. Others live in subdivisions made entirely of Lincoln logs behind gated communities guarded by retired bears.

There’s a lot up north to enjoy. To the east is Canyon de Chelly, which is not that far from Canyon de Che Guevara. To the west is the Grand Canyon, our Venus Flytrap for European Tourists. To the north is Monument Valley, the spot where Forrest Gump stopped running when he discovered the one treat tastier than a box of his momma’s chocolates, is an oil drum full of sizzling Indian Fry Bread.

During this trying season I’m inspired by our heroic TV weather wranglers who persevere day after grueling day, pointing to their green screens, saying “The National Weather Service has issued an extreme weather alert. It will be in effect until the sun turns into a red giant, swallows the solar system and blows.” And yet they smile.

Speaking of smiling and taking vacations, I’ll be taking a week off the last week of July. That should do me until another week-long break in early October. Until then I’ll be posting away in the produce freezer at Food City with a smile in my heart and popsicles in my pants and dreaming of rain. Please shut my freezer door after you’ve gotten your frozen peas.

Coming this Sunday: Luna: Episode 4

A water tanker is hit by terrorists, we meet detective Mars Montaño, temperatures are rising, Luna’s brother, Cassius, has news from Antarctica and something’s brewing at Tucson’s Diaz-Borman Space Port.