Dog days

Publisher remembers when Texas wasn’t quite so hot

When I was in my teens, I could stay on a tennis court all afternoon during the Texas summers.

I grew up a little over two hours from here, so I’d imagine our summer temperatures were similar. It was hot, but my friend, Randy Becker and I went out one Saturday and played eight sets of tennis — singles. Then we went out the next day and played seven more. It was probably July or August and we thought nothing of it. Most every other weekend, we competed in tournaments around Central Texas.

Now, I go out Monday night to play and it is danged hot. I’m heavier than I was in high school, of course, but in decent shape for a guy in his mid-50s. And age no doubt makes us a bit more sensitive to the heat.

But man, this heat! Here we are just a week into “official” summer and it’s a smothering blanket of heat and humidity that is forcing us to run for the couch and the air conditioning.

There’s a scene in Neil Simon’s “Biloxi Blues,” where a young, enlisted soldier from Brooklyn, New York reports to boot camp in Biloxi. “Boy, this is hot,” he said. “This is like Africa hot. Tarzan couldn’t take this kind of hot.”

Africa used to be the place we judged extreme heat. I’m sure whoever keeps that poll sees Texas rising in the ranks.

One study shows the hottest places in the entire world this week will be parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Texas. Our Cary Burgess has an article this week explaining what’s happening weather-wise that’s causing this.

During this time, stay inside. And bring your furry friends inside, too. Keep hydration top of mind for you and Rover.

Our politicos in the Texas Capitol control the figurative levers of power and the literal switches to our air conditioners. After the winter blizzard two and one-half years ago, their remedies for making sure we all have electricity when the temps soar above 100 do not inspire much confidence. Indeed, we already are having rolling outages in parts of the Lone Star state.

Lots of people around here wave off “green energy,” like solar and wind. But those sources have saved us from more electric outages than any officeholder would care to admit.

This newspaper publisher doesn’t know the answer to the global warming debate, nor will it be solved in the pages of this weekly paper. I hear from some people who swear claims are a hoax, yet I read of what would constitute a consensus of scientists to swear human activity causes global warming.

James Baker, whom I respect greatly, wrote recently that a carbon tax would help ease global warming, while the electric car fans are still dealing with planning long trips around charging stations that are still juiced by electricity from traditional fuel sources — coal and gas. That’s an irony we should work toward getting around.

As all this goes on, we still deal with this current heat wave, a “once-in-a-century” phenomenon that seems to happen about every five years now, along with floods and droughts.

So, no. I don’t know the answer or if this is cyclical or if we’re on our way to a place from which we can never turn back.

I just know it’s hotter now than it was in my youth. —K.E.C.