My goodness. Sometimes one does wonder if somehow one is absorbing a little whiskey through the air! What on EARTH???????
Just now, I’m puttering around the Funny Farm and thinking, ohhhhh, I’d like to walk up to the grocery store and buy a cool li’l snack and also something for the Doggy-Woggy!
Ohhhhhh, wouldn’t that be nice??
Uhm. Well. No. Just stepped out into the backyard to attend to some minuscule task and… MY GAWD! It is ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN DEGREES in the shade out there!!!!!
Holeeee maquerel!!!!!!
So. Neither the Doggy Woggy nor the Wacky Human are getting any nummies this afternoon. CAN you imagine????
Seriously: I can’t remember that Arabia, that hell-hole of heat and humidity, was ever this hot.
Gosh, I hated that place. Didn’t know any better because I started out there at an age just short of three years old. But dumb as I was and inexperienced as I was, I did know when the air was so hot and thick you could barely breathe it. And I was happy — more happy than you can imagine! — when after ten years in that horrible place my father decided to quit Aramco and take a job in California.
Freedom’s just another word….
Now…California, I do miss! Arizona leaves a lot to be desired: like a livable climate and a sophisticated culture. It’s a helluva lot better than Saudi Arabia. But it still would not be my first choice of domiciles.
Why did my parents retire here, to Arizona?
Cheap, I reckon. Sun City offered decently built tract houses in a pretty safe setting, for a price that would have been half of what they’d have had to pay to own a place in California.
Well, I’ll tellya… Sun City was a helluva lot better than Saudi Arabia. But it still would never have been my choice of places to live.
Where my father was concerned, if it was cheap (yet middle-class in ambience), it was good. And yeah: the real estate was cheap there, out in the middle of the cotton fields.
It’s all built up now, and not a bad place to live — in a whitey-white suburban way. Not my taste, but he and my mother liked it. My mother loved it, actually, and that must have gratified my father.
Now…hmmmmm…. If we were in Sun City right now, would I be able to walk to the nearest grocery store and snab a bottle of white wine?
Yeah. I expect.
The walk would be much longer — that place only has a couple of small shopping centers, for acre on acre on acre of houses. It would be hotter: hardly any trees grow out there. But it could be done.
Given my ‘druthers, I’d stay here. The houses are similar, the prices aren’t much higher, and the amenities are far more abundant. Sun City: a ghetto for old folks.
A ghetto’s a ghetto’s a ghetto….