Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

“Hotter Than a By-Gawd!”

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LOL! That was one of my father’s favorite turns of phrase:

  • Hotter than a by-gawd
  • Hotter than a two-dollar cookstove
  • Hotter than a three-dollar pistol
  • Hot enough to fry eggs on the sidewalk

On and on…. He was a good Texas boy, a dyed-in-the-wool Southerner, and he had a suitcase full of little sayings like that.

😀

Who knows what he’d pull out today, if he were still among us! Thermometer in the shade of the back porch reads 103.  And yeah: he’d regard that as passing warm. Wunderground says we’re supposed to reach 109 today, though.

Me: just back from a dog-free stroll around the ‘Hood. No doubt not my wisest move of the day…. 😮

Probably ought to take a shower to cool down. But…well…I’m too lazy just now to regard cleaning the bathtub afterward as a lovely way to spend time this morning. And o’course, you fail to wipe down the plastic walls after a shower…at your peril. A giant scrubbing job is NOT what I want to tuck into the cards.

Meandering up the sidewalk, I passed workmen at a couple of houses — guys who looked like they were engaged in carpentry or painting. LORDIE! Can you imagine doing that kind of physical work in 110-degree heat?

And yes, it soon will be 110°…at least. Just now, it’s only 10:30 in the morning!

WhatEVER possessed my parents to drag us to Arizona???

Well, they thought Sun City was about the greatest innovation the human race ever devised: “No kids screaming outside my window when I’m trying to take a nap,” my father intoned, with pleased awe.

Adding to that bit of charm, Sun City was then and is now as whitey-white as  you can get. To my parents, that was a positive trait of the first rank.

That was in 1962: sixty-four years ago! 

Even today: an African-American friend of mine — a business professional — had the brazen nerve to buy a house out there. He was literally HOUNDED out of the place. Within six months, he sold up and moved out.

I suggested he buy the house for sale across the street from the Funny Farm. He declined. Apparently felt moving his blackness into our neighborhood was not a kind thing to do. Or maybe he didn’t care to dodge bullets flying down from the slum to the north of us…  😀

We are, after all, parked in lovely Sunnyslope: a crime-ridden slum of the first water.

No kidding. Parts of it — such as our neighborhood — are on the high side of upper-middle class. They qualify as North Central Phoenix, a tony district, indeed. But get six blocks to the north of us, and…hang onto your (hard-)hat!

Lordie! What a place!

Egad!! No Doggy-Walks Here…

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Get this! Wunderground says today’s high is supposed to be 111 degrees. You saw that right: a hundred and eleven degrees! 

Where does this damn place think it is? Saudi Arabia?

As we scribble, the back-porch thermometer reads 110 degrees…in the shade of the north-facing back porch. A covered porch. A ventilated covered porch…

Holeee sheee-ut!

We do have salmon and shrimp and accouterments that can be cooked up on the barbecue today. But tomorrow…well… Tomorrow I’ll have to walk(!!!) to the Albertson’s or the Sprouts to restock the supplies. And that will be a challenge.

I may see if I can get the neighborhood Uber driver to tote me over there…but…whaddaya bet that guy won’t feel any enthusiasm for getting on the road as dawn cracks?  And I sure don’t wanna be slamming around in the heat.

Let’s see…what time do these worthy retailers open?

  • Albertson’s:  6:00 a.m.
  • Sprouts: 7:00 a.m.
  • El Rancho: 6:00 a.m.

Hmmmm…  The El Rancho is closer. But the Albertson’s is a far better store for a middle-class shopper.

If I leave the house at 5:45, I could get to the store just as they’re opening. Grab the loot. Pay up. Gallop out the door…and maybe get back here by 7:00 a.m.

Or so…

Actually, that might not be too bad. Except that I don’t wanna start charging around at that hour. And toting groceries six or eight blocks through questionable territory doesn’t sound like much fun.

Also, one thing I’ve discovered over the kerjillion years that I’ve lived here: there’s a route through the neighborhood that comes out on the back side of the Albertson’s shopping center. That would allow me to get down there and yet dodge the jerks screaming obscenities at me.

Hm. They open at 6:00…okayyy… I might get back here by 7:00 — surely no later than 7:30. It would still be hot outside, but not yet hotter than Hell.

Dare not walk down there in the evening. For one thing, it’ll be hotter than the Hubs, all right: after a full day of Arizona sun blasting. But more to the point: whatever the weather, it’s just not safe. Too many jerks, assholes, and predators roam around between here and that shopping center.

Been there, done that, ain’t doin’it again!!

Really: what a place to live. If my son weren’t just down the road, I’d pull up stakes and head for either north Scottsdale or (un)lovely Sun City. Sure wouldn’t stay in central or north Phoenix: it truly isn’t safe.

I don’t wanna live in Sun City. Been there, done that, ain’t doin’ it again. BUT…at least in a ghetto for old folks, you don’t have a$$holes screaming obscenities at you as you walk to the nearest grocery store.

Soggy Doggy Day!

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Yuch!!!  It is SO HOT and SO WET out there, it feels like horrible Saudi Arabia, where we lived on the shore of the Persian Gulf. Wet, hot, and miserable.

To gild that soggy lily, war planes are busily roaring in and out of Luke Air Force Base. Nevvermind that they’re 20 miles to the west of us. We still get serenaded with the ominous melody of World War III, on its way to us: ggggRRRROOOAAAAARRRRRRR!

My mother used to sit on her patio, partaking her morning coffee to the melody of those damn warplanes. Ohhhhhh, she would coo. It’s the sound of fweedom! 

Yeah, Mom: the sound of Death, comin’ for you.

Why ARE people so stupid, anyway?

Ohhh well.  Ruby and I made it back to the house, finally, through air so thick you could practically swim through it. I’m now so hot and miserable, about all I can manage is sitting down and pounding on a keyboard. Had to put a throw over the back of the chair, to keep from wrecking the leather upholstery with the sweat I don’t feel like washing off myself right this minute.

I never could understand why my mother thought that jet warplane racket was some kind of sweet, patriotic melody.

Never did understand why she didn’t grasp the fact that the “melody” was a funeral ode to every civilian within nuclear bomb distance of our balmy home.

But then…I never did grasp what she thought was soooo wonderful about dreary, racist Sun City. Guess we just weren’t on the same wavelength.

Ugh!!!

Well, I’d better get up and brew a pot of coffee, before I fall down face-first on the tile floor….

And Now…WTF????

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Yesterday was a true, certifiable Day from Hell. Seriously…by bed-time, I knew that if I weren’t trapped here by owning the damn house outright and by the piddling retirement income and by the craving to live vaguely near my son, I would be SOOOO OUTTA PHOENIX!

But now…we have this morning. WTF?????

  • The weather is clear and more or less temperate. On the warm side, but highly tolerable.
  • The peripheral neuropathy: present, but tolerable in intensity.
  • The dawg: prancing along happily.
  • The hole-in-the-ground-into-which-to-pour-money: functioning normally this morning.
  • The toilet: now working normally.
  • The house: spotlessly clean after Wonder-Cleaning-Lady’s ministrations.
  • The laptop computer: apparently working normally again.
  • Outside temperature in the shade of the back porch at 7:30 a.m.: only 100 degrees.

Weird. 

The hound and the human got out the door early enough to circumnavigate the park without melting in the heat.

The babysitters M’hijito hired to ride herd on the Crazy Old Bat have not surfaced (thank Gawd!), or else they came by here while we were doggy-walking and simply ignored the note I left on the door for them, asking them to wait a few minutes until I could get back to the house. Good riddance, say I!

So…I dunno why the Manifestations from Hell have settled down. And I ain’t askin’!  Just hope they STAY settled down for awhile!

WHY do people live here???

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7:38 p.m.  The sun has gone down. And it’s 105 degrees under the ventilated shade structure on the back porch.

Central Arizona. Maricopa County. What a HELLISH place to live! Why do people settle here, anyway?

I got here because my parents dragged me here, when my father attempted to retire. (Failed, thanks to a major recession: he had to go back to work for another couple of years, much to his despair.)

Yeah. They thought Sun City was about the most brilliant village the human mind had ever conceived. Fine ticky-tacky houses. Gravel yards — no grass to water! Kids prohibited: no brats screaming outside your window when you’re trying to take a nap. Blacks prohibited: no negroid types pushing down your property values.

Yech!!!!!

As soon as they got moved and settled into their new brick hovel, they sent me down to Tucson and enrolled me in the University of Arizona. Because I was a National Honor Society scholar, they accomplished this by pulling me out of high school a year early: I never even set foot in a senior-year classroom.

Sun City is grim enough. Central Arizona forms the cake beneath that frosting: hot, intellectually backward, graced with bigotry….what a place! The UofA is a more or less adequate intellectual institution…though nothing like the school where I was set to go: U.C. Berkeley.

So…my arrival in Arizona was an encomium to disappointment.

And I do have to wonder, sometimes: if you don’t have a well-paying job here, WHY would you come here, and why would you stay here? Given that you have any choice in the matter…which I did not.

Why do I stay here? Well…I’m pretty well glued in. Everyone I know these days lives here. My son lives here. My jobs have been here. My paid-off house is here. My freelance business is now based here. Reckon I’m set here.

But it wouldn’t have been my choice….

Report from the Hubs of Hades

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Hot, humid, NASTY day. Back-porch thermometer says it’s only 98 degrees out there. (This: at sunrise!)  Add another 10 to that, and you get a feel for this morning’s balmy temperature.

The air outside is so wet it almost feels like Arabia….and where we lived was right on the (icky, sticky) shore of the Persian Gulf. No water dripping off the eaves, though. Out there, that was a phenomenon we used to wake up to, when the air was like this.

Too gummy outside to take the dawg for a walk. So…we’re becalmed in the house, loafing in the breeze of an electric fan set to “high.”

Once again, I’m brought around to the Classic Question of my daily living: Do I really want to stay here for the rest of my conscious life? 

Well…. 

The answer is yes, primarily — maybe only — because my son is here. If he were to move on, I probably would pull up stakes, too.

Where would I go?

Ideally, back to the San Francisco Bay Area.

But of course, I can’t afford that. {chortle!} Even back when I had a job, I couldn’t afford it.

Hmh. Think o’that: A Ph.D. and umpty-umpteen years of university teaching experience will not get you into a home in the place where you want to live! 

Jeez.

Why am I here?

Because my dear parents spotted Sun City as we were driving through the state one day. Oh my! They were so thrilled!!  Imagine: a whole, gigantic housing tract with NO KIDS.

Seriously: my father hated kids, especially when they were tearing around outside during his daily nap. Why he let his wife have me…that’s a question that escapes me. I think it was because my mother’s grandmother nagged them into spawning a child: she wanted a grandchild, and she thought my mother should absolutely positively NOT go childless.

At any rate, we’re here because Sun City banned children: a brilliant innovation, to my father’s mind. As soon as he could retire, he dragged us here. I was sent off to Tucson — to the University of Arizona — and they settled into stodgy retirement.

And the place was de facto strictly segregated. My father didn’t want any n*****s around him…no way, no how. And apparently that still holds, out there on the (un)lovely west side. One of my friends — who happens to be of the dusky persuasion — bought a house out there. He lasted about six months before he was hounded out!

Lovely Uptown Phoenix is not the only moderately desirable place to live here, though. If M’jito were to go back to the Bay Area — which I decidedly can no longer afford — I would probably move either to a suburb in the hills outside of Tucson or to a tract of standardized housing on the east side of Scottsdale. Both districts have better weather. And my guess is, the crime rate is probably lower in either place.

Sun City? Not my style! {heh!} A suburb built on Hate. 

Just groovy.