The Good and the Bad by Dr. Juan Harrison
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The wife said it was 94 just now, and it’s barely mid-June. The Dog Days of July and August have arrived a tad early. I have scars on my arms and neck when we went way over 100 the first week of June almost fifty years ago. We about burned up building the high school and Civic Center that summer. It made me look forward to the classroom and September again as I had in college unloading boxcars and eighteen wheelers full of grain and cattle feed at the CO-OP.
If you’re not from Texas, it’s hard to explain why and how we put up with it. Air conditioning makes life tolerable, but you have to go outside sometime. You learn to adapt or pay a price. Again, everything in life is relative. I liked show skiing and ice fishing living on the Canadian border, but I like it better not having to shovel all that snow, bundling up like an Eskimo, and worrying about my toes freezing off.
If you’re gonna stay a Texan, you gotta adapt. In the summer some outside workers may go to work early, take a break at midday, and work up into the evening. Seems like that western sun later in the day is more tolerable than that midday sun that beats you down. Some guys like me found it easier to leave my truck windows down as I moved from job to job. That way I didn’t get spoiled by the AC. It made it easier to stay acclimated to the heat. I just had to keep changing shirts, letting one dry out as I wore another. Headbands, towels, cool rags, special clothing—whatever helps you make it through the job.
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Probably the most important thing I’ve left out so far in surviving Texas heat is your mental attitude. That’s sorta redundant because your attitude comes from your mindset. Many of us olders can relate as you reflect back on days in the field or garden. Some people tell me they imagine some cool place far away in their imagination as they’re sweating in the lawn or in their garden.
A lot of people seem to find us Texans a little hard headed. That may have come from us fighting the elements here, especially the heat. We find more good here than bad. The winters are mild generally and we tend to have four distinct seasons. I’ve lived places that seemed to change climate overnight. Up north I learned not to stick my bare hand onto super cold metal; I might lose it. Down here you might wanna watch touching that hood of your car in July. You literally can fry an egg on the sidewalk in the summer.
Someone once said, “I wasn’t born a Texan, but I got here as soon as I could.” Overall, most Texans would say the good outweighs the bad; we welcome all the new guys relocating from other states. Don’t try to talk like us though. We understand Yankee and CA.
By Dr. Juan Harrison
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