“Hot Town, Summer in the City”
David B. Whitlock, Ph.D.
It’s hot. We are in the middle of the hottest summer since they started keeping records in 1880. And to think that only a few months ago we were complaining about the cold weather.
We tramped out of an unusually cold winter only to find ourselves trudging through a scorching summer. It has proponents on both sides of the global warming issue shouting at each other. The most convinced are the most strident.
This past winter the skeptics of global warming gloated. You recall temperatures were dropping to record lows in many places. It prompted Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhoffe to have a little fun at former Vice-President and global warming spokesman Al Gore’s expense. Inhoffe and family built an igloo with signs that read, “Al GORE’S NEW HOME,” and “HONK IF YOU LOVE GLOBAL WARMING.”
Today global warming advocates are jabbing back, “Are you warm enough yet?” “Feeling the heat?”
I’m not debating; I’m trying to cool off. I’m too tired to argue.
The heat wears us down, draining our energy, replacing our once spirited buoyancy with tired flatness. It’s got me feeling like Pete Bancini, one of the hospital patients in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, who continually declares, whether anyone is there to listen or not, “I’m tired.”
Fatigue has a close friend; they are almost inseparable: irritability. Ahh, the grumpy factor, a nasty side effect of a long, hot summer. I’m trying to confine my crotchety moments to myself. I can grumble, and then quickly shake it off when I see someone coming. But once in a while, I get an unexpected surprise from a summer heat- lover who sneaks up on me with a “doncha ya love this weather?” greeting, chuckling as he slaps my back, not giving me enough time to change my mood.
But, I’ve got a good excuse for my heat-provoked grouchiness: It’s inherited. I know it is because I can recall the moment I got it. It was a miserably hot summer, 1966. I was sitting in the back seat of my parents’ car. We were in “the city,” that is, Oklahoma City. Shopping never was one of my dad’s favorite activities, and that’s what we were doing. All day long. Because this was before the arrival of indoor shopping malls, we were in and out of one downtown store after another, getting hotter and hotter with each stop. Finally, much to my father’s relief, Mom announced we were finished, and we plopped into the car. Dad immediately flipped the air conditioner on “high” and raced away, trying to beat the afternoon traffic.
I could feel the grumpiness factor invade our automobile almost immediately after I asked Dad for the third time to turn up the volume on the radio, which was attuned to KOMA, the rock and roll AM station, playing at that very moment one of my favorite songs, “Summer in the City,” by the by the Lovin’ Spoonful. I was again about to ask for a little more volume, when Dad, mumbling about how much he hated city traffic, glared at the radio as if it were the reason for the heat, the traffic, the arduous day. “I might be able to maneuver in this traffic better if it weren’t for that blasted radio.” And with that he emphatically twisted the “on” knob to “off.”
No more Lovin’ Spoonful. But the “hot town” aggravation hung with me, and would return through the years in moments of extreme heat, erupting like a volcano letting off steam.
Sitting there in that heavy quietness, I felt—consciously for the first time, I do believe— grumpity too.
And that’s when I was inoculated with summertime grumpiness.
I started to protest the radio ban with Dad, but I knew I’d best not.
That’s why I’m not arguing about global warming, too: I’d best not, not if I want to keep that summertime grouchiness under control. And I plan to stand firm in my resolve. At least until the first snow in winter.
David B. Whitlock, Ph.D. is Pastor of Lebanon Baptist Church in Lebanon, KY. He also teaches in the School of Theology at Campbellsville University, Campbellsville, KY. His email address is drdavid@davidwhitlock.org