Thoughts From An Overheated Brain

Across the Fence #400

I think this long, dry stretch of heat and humidity has not only fried our lawn and surrounding crops, but has fried my brain too. Temperatures in the 90’s and even into the 100’s, day after day, is not what we’ve come to expect here in the Frozen Tundra.

Thank goodness for all the dandelions and white clover in our lawn or it would be as brown as everyone else’s lawn. It’s still quite green from all the dandelion leaves, and the clover adds a nice touch of white. I can really tell how many dandelions occupy our lawn now that the grass has turned a wonderful shade of brown. The only growing things that don’t seem to be affected by the heat and lack of moisture are the weeds. They continue to flourish. It makes me think we’re going about this lawn care stuff all wrong. We need to start growing weeds. It would really simplify our lives, and think of the money and time we’d save by not fertilizing, watering, and mowing. That goes for the gardens too. The weeds seem to rule. You’ve got to admit, many of those weeds are a lot more colorful than the grass we try to nurture and care for. I told you this heat had affected my thinking.

On the bright side, we haven’t had to mow the lawn for a long time, so we’re saving gas money. But we’ve been running the air-conditioner and I can just feel that saved gas money being sucked out of the house through that air-conditioner. I’m gonna’ hate to see our next electric bill. Does anyone else think air-conditioning makes the heat seem all that much worse? I sure notice it. I tend to sweat a lot but soon get acclimated to the heat–just like those days back in the haymow on a hot, humid day. I think we survived those days on cold water pumped direct from windmill and ice-cold Kool Aide, enjoyed while sitting at the picnic table in the shade of the maple tree. I haven’t had a glass of strawberry or grape Kool Aide, poured from a big, glass pitcher, for a long time.

But I digress. I was talking about air-conditioning. When I walk into some businesses and offices, its like being hit with a blast of cold air. It practically takes your breath away. I’ve seen people go out to their cars and bring in a sweater or jacket to put on. It feels like the middle of winter and the business forgot to pay their heating bill, and had their electricity shut off. Then when I walk out of the place, the hot air hits me, my glasses immediately fog over, and I stumble around the parking lot trying to find my car. I have to wait until my glasses clear up before I can drive out of the lot. I think we go to extremes with air-conditioning and it can’t be healthy. It’s also imprisoned many people in their houses in the summertime because they don’t like to go out in the heat and humidity. I told you this heat was playing with my mind.

I got thinking about the loss of small town post offices too. I’ll blame the heat for this thought too. Remember when a letter arrived with a postmark from the town it was mailed in? As a collector of postal history, I miss those old postmarks. Now the few personal letters that are mailed go to a distribution center for sorting, postmarking, and distribution. In our case it’s La Crosse. A letter may get mailed in Westby, but it gets a La Crosse postmark. The reason I got to thinking about post offices, besides the excessive heat going to my brain, is that I received another unsigned letter this week, critical of something I wrote. It didn’t have a return address either, and of course had a La Crosse postmark. So it could have come from any community in Wisconsin where people read my column. At least the writer had a P.S. that said they liked my writing and were glad I wrote for the paper. This letter also brought up another question in my mind. Why is it that people who don’t like something a writer says will voice that opinion in a letter to the editor or a letter to the writer, but people seldom write if they like something. I do get a lot of verbal comments and I appreciate all of them.

As long as we’re talking about heat and lack of rain, I hope everyone is putting water out for the birds. They need water too. Most of their water holes and places to find water have dried up. Here on the prairie, it’s really hard to find any running or standing water. That brought up another thought in my heat-parched brain. Why did my ancestors settle here on the prairie where there is no water nearby? They couldn’t just drill a hole and strike water. They had to go by horse and wagon to nearby springs and creeks and fill buckets and jars with water. That can be several miles in our case. Just wondering how and why they did these things.

It’s funny what strange thoughts you can have when your brain is overheated and you’d give anything for a cold drink of water from the windmill. Stay cool, everyone!


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