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Smith Says

Published Tuesday, July 06, 2010 2:20 PM

By Julie R. Smith
Summerville Journal Scene ®

I hate hot weather. Thus far this summer, I’ve had plenty to hate.

Numerous transplanted Northerners have told me, “Broiling like a pig on a spit is still better than being snowed in from October to April.”

I used to work with a reporter who’d call his friends in Michigan cackling about our balmy weather “while you losers still have a foot of snow!” He got hung up on a lot.

I understand that shoveling snow from your driveway and using a butane torch to melt ice off your dog is a drag. I also understand that when it’s freezing, I can bundle up in thermal underwear (pink, thank you), jeans, a sweater, ski hat, gloves and a down jacket and be cozy as toast—but when it’s 98 degrees with humidity off the charts, you can’t take off enough clothes to get cool.

Part of my problem is that my ancient, wheezing Ford Explorer has leather seats. In the summer, they’ll melt the skin from your thighs. (I’d love slimmer thighs, but not using this method.)

Last week I put on shorts, sandals and a crisp white shirt—sleeveless--to run errands before going to work. With the AC on maximum, I still sweated like a hog in the seventh circle of hell. (Are you seeing a pork theme here?)

I left our house at 11:30 a.m. When I got to work two hours later, you could’ve wrung my shirt out like a washcloth. Even my eyebrows were sweating, and that’s just nasty.

Is it global warming, or simply summer as usual in the subtropics?

My beloved brother, T-Bob, lives in south Florida. He flew in for a visit about eight years ago. In August. I picked him up at the airport and we made a couple of stops before heading home.

As we left the grocery store in humidity so thick his clammy khakis were clinging to his legs, he turned to me and boomed, “My Gawd! How! Do! You! Stand! This! Heat!”

“We drink a lot of gin,” I replied.

T-Bob paid us another visit last week, en route to our native state of North Carolina. He spent one night and that was enough. When he walked out with the dog at 10 p.m., his glasses steamed up and he almost fell off the porch.

“It’s 83 degrees,” I said, apologetically.

He mopped his brow and said, “I’ve been in Phoenix when it was 106 degrees, and it wasn’t this bad. Y’all are crazy.” (Naturally, he knows I was crazy long before moving to the Lowcountry.)

The glimmer of good news in all this is that my husband, Widdle Baby, hates being hot as much as I do. Nor does he like being cold. Thus we have never once argued about the thermostat setting, which many wives tell me is a minor miracle.

Our house in August is cool and dim (because I pull the blinds down), and in February it’s toasty and sunny (he pulls them back up.)

Yesterday after Widdle took his third shower of the day, we started talking about the blazing heat. “I’ll bet you could fry an egg on the sidewalk,” he said, staring out the window.

“We’re out of eggs,” I said. Then I brightened. “But we have bacon!”

Julie R. Smith, who’s obsessed with pork products, can be reached at widdleswife@aol.com.

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104 East Doty Avenue | Summerville, SC 29483 | 843-873-9424 office | 843-873-9432 fax