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Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

The weather was a bit rude.

I knew because I’d heard people’s conversations like this one: “It’s too hot to do anything but complain about the heat.”

“Yeah, it’s hot.”

“I was just going to say that very same thing.”

It was hotter than a sunburn in a sauna.

It was hotter than a fire ant in a frying pan.

It was hotter than a skeeter in a skillet.

You get it, it was a scorcher. It was a cheap hair-dryer hot.

It was during a long wait at a clinic recently when a young woman pushing a cart offered me water or snacks — gratis. I grabbed a small bottle of water. I glug-glugged it down.

It was mighty good with a watery taste.

The young woman had been an oasis on legs. An oasis is a spot in a desert where water is found.

I became happily hydrated.

Today, an oasis is an air-conditioned spot to drink water in the shade.

I recalled days of baling hay that were hotter than a metal playground slide at high noon. Drinking cold water from the well was a pleasant experience — much nicer than jumping into a cow tank. It didn’t scare the cattle as much.

In the good old days, when it was hotter than an habanero’s armpit, a cool place wasn’t as easy to find as it is today.

When I was a sapling, we had the traditional 4 X 40 system of air conditioning. Driving the car around at 40 mph with all four windows rolled down got the air moving and allowed us to avoid a couple of the highest degrees of the temperatures of a torrid heat.

On days when it was hotter than a burning stump, it was good to spend as much time as possible counting the items in the frozen food section of the local grocery store.

On a day hotter than five hogs in a hot tub, a rag dipped in cold water and applied to the back of the neck was cooling.

I heard regularly that it was as hot as all get out. I reckon “all get out” means to the utmost conceivable degree. “As hot as blue blazes” was another frequent lament, referencing the blue color of the hottest part of a flame.

How hot was it? Even the devil was sweating. It was so hot, the ice cream truck melted. You could fry an egg on the sidewalk. It was hotter than Arizona asphalt. Hotter than the hinges of Hades. Hotter than hell and half of Georgia. It was hot enough that entire bodies got a hotfoot. It was so hot that a dog chased a squirrel, and they were both walking.

The neighbor of one of my aunts said, “If it gets any hotter, I’ll have to take off things I should keep on.”

My mother sang “Jingle Bells” on blistering hot days, hoping to fool minds into thinking we were in chilly Christmas-season weather. It didn’t work, but it provided me with a nasty and persistent earworm.

We live in the good old days. When it’s a scorcher, we have air conditioning that’s easy to find because it’s blowing out snowballs.

Hot weather worries us. We’re afraid it might be keeping company with severe weather. Tornadoes can cause a runaway terrain, and a heavy rain could lead to a trash-moving flood.

Moths flew around our yard light. Every one of them had booked a round-trip flight. None of them could get a direct flight.

Bats joined them and took some batting practice. There’s a reason they come out late in the day. Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.

Canslaw is what’s left after a mower runs over an aluminum pop or beer can.

What do you call a human who has been run over by the sun’s heat? Solslaw? If you enjoy going barefoot, stay off the pavement, unless you’re a world-class sprinter.

When you see a sign and can’t remember if it read road work ahead for the next three miles or for the next three years, please remember that it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity and the people asking if it’s hot enough for us.

Al Batt’s column appears in the Tribune every Wednesday.