“…Leave us all enjoy it,” as the late Governor Jack Williams, that avatar of hickish literacy, used to crow on his morning radio show.
We have a chilly 80 degrees outside, with FORTY PERCENT HUMIDITY. Traipsing around the park with the dog was like spending 40 minutes in a sauna.
One good thing, though: not many other dog-walkers out there. That meant we got through the whole trip without a dog fight — neither real nor threatened. That was refreshing. I guess.
This — hot and soggy — is a typical day in Saudi Arabia. How my father (or any other Westerners) managed to survive TEN YEARS of physical, outdoor work in that Hellish climate escapes me.
Finally made it back to the house: the pooch very chipper, the human about to melt into the ground.
Meanwhile, during the entire trudge we were serenaded with an infernal RRROOOOOOOOAAAAAAARRRRRRRR from Luke Air Force Base. That place is a good 20 miles from here.
My mother, an inveterate John Bircher patriot, used to simper on about how that racket was “the sound of freedom” as she sat on her back porch in Sun City, listening to blasting jets over her morning coffee.
This is what keeps me from moving to the blankly middle-class realms of Fountain Hills, where the weather is cooler, you could walk to the Mayo Clinic, and you’re within ten minutes of Scottsdale’s infinitely superior shopping. Passenger jets from Sky Harbor take off in the morning, headed north over Fountain Hills, and land in the evening, headed south. People out there bellyache all the time that they can’t have their morning coffee over breakfast or their post-prandial wine after dinner — not on the back porches that they paid handsomely to buy.
Who would imagine that, as you’re shopping for a house, you need to look into the noise from commercial and military plane traffic?
ooohhhh well…