Mowing Grass In The Texas Heat

I worked hard today (well, for me), mowing and weed-eating and trimming with the shears. It took a good part of the day, though I admit I took my usual extensive and frequent breaks. Here I am all tired out, my feet hurt, my back hurts, my hands and arms hurt, and I suppose that I could feel some sort of sense of victory about "beating" today's problems or getting my work done except for one thing—this is the third, not the first day, of working at this bloody infernal task! Jesus, I'm a zero!

You may be wondering, what's the number of hours involved, the square feet involved, and then you'd figure out if I were slow or fast, dead or alive. Blow that. It's enough for me to know that I used to able to do the whole thing in two days, sometimes (if I gave a damn) even one day. I used to do it better, I used to do it more nimbly, and I used to By God do it way the hell faster!

It's not even hot here yet (not for Texas), so that torture factor does not yet have to be computed. Of course, you might have to spend more time in the sun all at once than I do to be any real judge of how bad the Texas heat is. I know it's hot—that's why I wear a hat. But, in local parlance, it's not "broiling" yet, and that's what I'm considering as "hot". This heat today was baby stuff. And when it does get really hot, you'll wish the day was half as long and that you could spend half of that in the air-conditioned house.

We had no AC when I was a kid in Texas; when I got hot outside and came home, I'd flop down in bed while the huge attic fan sucked a continuous breeze into the house through all the open windows and across my sweaty flesh. I would stay there and gasp like a fish for what seemed like eons. Eventually, evaporation began to work and I caught my breath again and my body temperature normalized. All I can figure is that the pioneers who settled Texas must have been some inhumanly tough sonsabitches. Me, I would never have paused here longer than it took to get a drink of cool creek water.

Well, there's worse places, of course—I think they call it The Desert! Is that an improvement of some kind or what? It's true you don't have to mow any grass in The Desert! But it seems like Bad to Worse and Bad to Worse all over again to me.

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"Communism is like one big phone company." — Lenny Bruce

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