Is it hot enough for ya?

Published 2:50 pm Friday, July 8, 2022

I’m not here today to debate global warming or anything else. I want to simply elaborate on the following statement:

“Dang it’s hot.”

Serious heat in South Georgia is nothing new. But it sure does seem like it’s hotter than I remember it being (I’m sure that has nothing to do with the fact that I’m older). In the summers of my youth, it was nothing for me to spend the majority of my days out in the heat — up to and even including baling hay, which may just be the hottest thing I’ve ever done in it. However, I am convinced the 95 degrees experienced then cannot be the same 95 degrees we have now. Fifteen minutes out in this mess and I look like I’ve been hosed down and legitimately need a place in the shade to sit down.

Of course, we all know it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity that gets you, right?

Anyone up north complaining about 87 degree heat does not understand. When they do so, ask the Lord for patience, fix a cold glass of sweet tea and say “bless their heart” knowing they know not what the heck they are talking about.

But I digress. In the summer a lot of southerners will hit you with the standard summer greeting of “Is it hot enough for ya?” To which the standard answer is a high-pitched “Whew!” followed with an emphatic “what are you talking about!?” (I’ve always been tempted to reply with “no it’s not…can you make it hotter?” just to see how they’d react)

Southerners have many great ways to describe our heat. I remember my grandfather’s “I’m sweating like a hog in heat” line. Now that I’m older I see a brilliant double entendre in there I didn’t see when I was a kid.

And I remember being told to never refer to how much a lady was sweating, because she wasn’t sweating, she was actually “glistening.” You know, kind of like how roaches in Charleston are not roaches but are actually “palmetto bugs.”

Anyway, back to the heat. I asked some friends to share how they describe how hot it is to others — some responses:

It’s so hot…

…I saw a dog chasing a cat and they both were walking.

…my belly fat has turned into fish fry grease.

…you catch catfish already fried.

…eggs come out hard boiled.

…Jesus turned the wine back into water.

…you can’t make a chili dog.

…I set the house on fire to cool off.

…I saw an Amish guy buying an air conditioner.

…you could fry a pickle in an icicle.

…I saw a funeral procession pull through Dairy Queen. 

…you could bake biscuits in the mailbox.

…the devil went down to Georgia then went home to cool off.

Or, it’s hotter than…

…hell and half of Georgia.

…hell’s hinges.

…a $2 pistol on the Fourth of July.

…a blister bug in a pepper patch.

…a billy goat with a blowtorch. 

…jumper cables at a redneck funeral.

…a chainsaw in an Alabama pawn shop. 

…a $2 hooker on payday.

…hemorrhoids on Taco Tuesday.

And finally, I’m sweating like a…

…politician on election day.

…sinner in church.

…watermelon at a Baptist barbecue.

One variation: “I’m sweating in places God didn’t intend to sweat.”

Or, you can just sum it all up with this single line: “If it gets any hotter I’ll have to take off stuff I really ought to keep on.”

We have all become very spoiled in the last 50 or so years. How did folks “back in the day” stay anything resembling cool? Remember — in 1960 only 10% of American homes had air conditioners.

So what did they do? Well, they built homes with really high ceilings, allowing the heat to “rise above” their living space. They had lots of screened doors and windows to create as many circulation avenues as possible. Kitchens were isolated from the rest of the house, and cooking was only done in the mornings and evenings. Fans were in every room of the house, both hand-powered and electric.

Make no mistake about it, air conditioning has now conditioned most of us from being able to stay in the summer heat for very long. And we all know the worst utterance that can be said in any southern home during the scorching days of summer are:

“The A/C isn’t working.”

Those are the words of hellish nightmares, because suddenly we have no choice but to try to resort to some of those ‘old school’ methods to keep us cool, of which none of them do and/or will.

And so, I close today with a word of prayer that I think we all can embrace and repeat when/where needed this summer:

“Lord, we pray for a hedge of protection over these holiest of vessels of which we know we are not worthy. For these blessed conditioners of air, Lord, we pray you might fill them with a double dose of Freon and a tireless work ethic that will enable them to do their jobs over the coming days in the convection oven/air fryer/furnace we call South Georgia and all over the South in general. We know that only Satan himself would cause them to not work, and we rebuke him in your name. In the name of Jesus, Willis Carrier, and 73 degrees on the thermostat we pray. 

Amen.”