It was clear to me before I confirmed it on the handy-dandy internet that whoever wrote the line “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy” never lived in Texas. Sure enough, DeBose Heyward was born and lived much of his life in Charleston, South Carolina. I’ve been to Charleston in the summertime, and the livin’ aIn’t easy there that time of year either.
A longtime friend of mine and I were talking years ago about Texas in the summer. As a native Texan would do to another native Texan, he talked of how we natives deal with this weather. “Real Texans don’t complain about how hot it is. At most, we may comment on it. Mostly we ride it out, and we don’t summer somewhere cooler. Besides, real Texans don’t use summer as a verb.”
So when I hear a complaint, I just give a standard reply of, “Well, it’s July in Texas.” I think, “What do you expect? Sleet?”
Summer didn’t start on the summer solstice when I was a child nor did it end with the autumnal equinox. It started when school let out at the end of May and was over when school started right after Labor Day. It was less a season and more a period of time when every weekday was Saturday. It seemed endless at its beginning but proved to be finite by the time August arrived. If it was hot back then, I don’t really remember.
Once we all started to drive, it seemed most everybody had a summer job to go along with that limited freedom. Maybe it was hot during those summers, but I didn’t really notice.
Eventually I would notice how hot it was, but not until I was out of school and living in Dallas. That summer of 1980, which was so long ago only the old-timers will remember it, was hotter than hell. On June 26, the temperature reached a record breaking 113 degrees. The very next day it hit 113 again. Those records remain intact to this day. In the month of July, every single day the thermometer hit triple digits. That was when I fell out of love with summer.
I try not to complain about the heat. I can say that I don’t think it’s been that bad this year, but then how would I know? I’m not out in it every day. I know Kittycat gets hotter than the devil, and she will steer herself to the far end of the parking lot to get a space half shaded by some rangy plant that could never be described accurately as a tree.
Of course, there is plenty going on that it is worth complaining about. But I do think there’s wisdom in the supposed motto of the Royal Family to never complain and never explain. After all, even a valid complaint isn’t a solution, and the best explanation isn’t a strategy. I should know, as Karl can affirm that I can complain and explain endlessly. All full of sound and fury, as Shakespeare might say, signifying nothing.
There does seem to be some concern about bad behavior being normalized, particularly as it applies to certain people in certain positions of power. This could be a valid complaint if one assumes that failure to complain about such behavior results in this normalization. But then it could be that some folks have realized that relentless complaining is at best lacking efficacy and at worst is downright feckless. Hopefully, there are such folks who are working to define a solution and develop a strategy to implement it.
I’m not in the business of predicting what will happen, but we can all look at what the best prognosticators are saying about the weather in Texas. In a word, it looks like it’s going to be hot. Probably more than a dozen days hitting 100 degrees in August. Knowing Texas, it’ll still be pretty hot into September, and we’ll be lucky if we can get a sweater day before the end of the month. As for October and November, some things will cool down and some things will heat up. That’s probably true across the nation in any election year.
I know many of us are going to be sick to death by November of all the political ads, the latest polling, and what’s happening in all the decisive senate races. We’ll be thinking, “Oh, I just wish the damned thing was over so we can just move on.”
If someone says it out loud, I suppose the correct response is, “Well, it’s election year in America.” At the same time, one could be thinking, “What did you expect? The livin’ to be easy?”
