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| Dem Southerners Is Crazy, I Tell's Ya |
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| NASCAR? Naw. Swamp Coolers alls the proof you'se needs.... |
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This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, July 14, 1999. We just got through a very hot period here in Colorado. It was well over one hundred degrees for several days in a row, and although that was nothing compared to what they endured on the East Coast, for example, it certainly was an annoying experience here in Boulder the Damned, where affluence and perfection of mind and body are supposed to allay nature’s infliction of actual discomfort by weather. People began to sweat outside of the rec center saunas when they were not in their physical exertion ensembles, and this embarrassment made people cranky. It was handled in various ways. Various strange ways. People in discomfort, I have found, take great stock in old sayings passed down from senile relatives in mental dementia on their deathbeds. This is what explains absolutely useless devices such as swamp coolers. I know the theory here. Water extracts heat from the air and returns the hypothetically cooled zephyrs to the benefit of those enduring these ghastly sounding devices, generally in enclosed spaces. When the weather breaks eighty degrees Fahrenheit, all the recycled water actually does is take in all this heat, evaporate, and drive up the humidity to around 97% in the room, which soon puts it in the same league as the temperature, and what was once endurable dry heat now is a sauna. Still, people nod to each other in various stages of heat prostration and mumble “the cooler’s on” with the same satisfaction people used to say “cavalry’s comin’” before taking an Oglala arrow in the gut. People who own swamp coolers become environmentalists early on, pointing out that they use so much less energy than air conditioning or slaves with palm fans. And they seem to enjoy that you can reuse the same water, over and over again. Since the water soon is heated by motor and air to just under one hundred twenty degrees, all the dust and air borne pestilences soon find happy homes in the recirculated sludge and become breeding grounds of plague. Plague if we’re lucky. To counteract this, people will use disinfectants in their swamp coolers, like Lysol or bleach, to increase the perfume in air already overcrowded with the fetid odors of people who don’t normally sweat outside of the gym or IRS audit. Swamp coolers are wonderful when the weather doesn’t require cooling; otherwise they should be drained of their malarial waters until October. Naturally, these cruel devices are very popular in the South, the very heartland of deathbed instructions to families of insane, inbred Americans who, not so strangely, tend to enjoy bad, sweet cocktails and lots of hot food in hot, humid, heavy weather. “Hot food for hot weather.” This expression evolved in the Southern United States, where in hot weather with no refrigeration everything was hot no matter what you did, and perhaps this axiom was merely putting the best face on a bad situation. But the expression and habit stayed long after air-conditioning finished off most Southern culture. You still hear it. “Hot food for hot weather.” To my mind, this makes only sense if the hot food is hot Maine lobster, corn on the cob, or Mexican food served outdoors. It does not make sense if the hot food is some mayonnaise-based casserole with tuber ingredients. I have no doubt that what evolved into cold potato salad started out as a Southern dish, served at around 300 degrees in midday to businessmen in Atlanta. Since everyone was fit only for about nine hours of sleep after two mouthfuls, the dishes were stored in iceboxes or next to the swamp coolers and a bearable summer dish and at least four new bacteria were born by discovery the next morning. Now about those sweet cocktails. Everybody loves Mint Juleps but everybody drinks them with ice or refrigerated ingredients today. When this drink elbowed its way onto the national stage from Southern verandahs, they didn’t have ice. It was a room temperature drink. Think about that. Warm mint drink, before or after a hot potato meal in a viral hot-room heated by swamp cooler. It explains so much that has emerged from the South. Stock Car races. Tennessee Williams. Country music. Staflostreptococus. A need for God in their lives. And, during our recent heat wave, I saw with my own eyes people frying chicken at midday, sipping suspiciously minty looking drinks amidst the cold beer, calibrating the need to rev up the old cooler. These people operate upon old wives tales. The only correct way to endure heat is to strip naked, sit in a cold tub of water, and sip cold lager for three days listening to Zamphir turned all the way up on the stereo or until the heat lifts. I know what I’m talking about. Don’t listen to those crazy southern people. |
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