Summer has been on-again, off-again this year. May’s Memorial Day weekend gave us highs of 60s, then back to our 80s for June and July, with a few 90s thrown in so we remember we are in the south.
This week, however, is going to be hot by anyone’s standards.
I love hot weather, mainly because I am always cold. I run my heater in my office all year because I can’t stand 72 degree air-conditioned air blowing on me. My husband is kind enough to keep the house at 72, cranking it down a bit for sleeping upstairs. I bundle up in blankets, and we have a happy compromise.
Even though I am a hot-weather lover, I am particular about the type of hot weather I love. In other words, there’s hot, and then there’s HOT.
As I don’t spend much – well, any – time in the climes of Arizona/Nevada, the “hot but no humidity” weather doesn’t make my list. Chances are I would love it, but I gotta go with what I know.
My favorite hot is beach hot. The humidity is still there, but it’s breezy. While a morning shower makes it a bit steamy, the late afternoon ones can be heavenly.
A close second is Great Smoky Mountain hot. The great thing about mountain hot is that you are just a short jaunt from relief. It can be 85 degrees at the Chimneys. Drive 30 minutes to Clingman’s Dome, and it’s mid-60s.
Most of the time, Knoxville hot is okay for a heat-lover like me. Yes, it’s not only hot but humid which can get unpleasant, as today and Thursday are bound to prove. If I had an outside job or beloved hobby/sporting event I wanted to do during the day, I would probably complain more about Knoxville’s hot August days, but I don’t. I find it wonderful to give my heater a rest and just step outside when I want to “warm up.”
My least favorite hot is West Tennessee hot. Intellectually I know that humidity can’t be 100 percent unless you are in a supersaturation cloud, but West Tennessee hot feels like it comes close. I grew up 100 miles from Memphis in one direction, with Nashville 100 miles in the other. Nashville was stingy with sending us their weather but hot and humid Memphis was always happy to oblige.
Maybe it’s because I had not yet developed my “always cold” tendencies when I was a child. Maybe it’s because my mother was hot-natured, and I remember those weather complaints.
Most likely, however, my dislike of West Tennessee hot is all because of blackberries. My maternal grandparents had a favorite wild blackberry patch, and picking blackberries in late July and early August was an annual excursion.
These days, I’m not sure protective services would let parents dress their young children in long pants and long-sleeve shirts (chigger protection) and spend a couple of August mornings in snake-invested, thorny blackberry patches. I never actually saw a snake because Papaw would go ahead of us with a big stick while he made all kinds of noise, but there was little doubt we were invading their territory.
Even though we went early in the morning, I remember those days as West Tennessee hot at its best.
Somehow, we survived, and the memory rolls quickly from a definite non-favorite to a Top 10 favorite because of the payoff: Sitting with the family in the carport swing just before dusk, lighting bugs dotting the yard, eating Mamaw’s homemade blackberry cobbler with Papaw’s hand-churned vanilla ice cream.
That is a super-hot memory!
Sherri Gardner Howell has been writing about family life for newspapers and magazines since 1987. She lives in West Knoxville, is married to Neville Howell and has two sons and three grandsons.
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