Fresno Famous

'..So they said that you had temperatures up to a 120, out there...'

I'm near hallucinating at this point, water pouring out of every pore I got, chiseling a piece of wood to shape,
'yeah, Mom, it's hot, it's like really hot, I usually don't even look at it over a hundred or so, a cool day is a hundred, when it goes to a hundred-ten, it sort of hurts to breathe, but there are happy aspects to it..'

'like what?'

'um, oh, uh, hell, I dunno, um, well,,,, for example, the laundry that I'm hanging on the line now,'

'yes.'

'well its basically aleady dry... I can start taking it down,, it will be bone dry in an hour...'

I drink about two gallons of water a day.
I'm soaked everywhere I go, people think I'm incontinent.
I swear, I'm going diabetic, but that's not it.
I drink the tap water too...
(dude, I'm from Jersey and NY... I was born in chemicals, that's how my whole family checks out, 'Heart Attack, Cancer, or Asbestosis.')

-the Asbestosis is from Johns Mansville and the small towns surrounding (Manville, in the Ripleys' believe it or not for most bars in a town, (per block, usually two in the middle, one on either end.)
(Asbestos is what they used for high heat suppression back in the day...
My mom and her brothers and sisters used to take cardboard, and sit on the piles of it, and ride down the hills of asbestos like it was snow...
-they used to blow it out into the street in clouds...)

(Manville, which is what JM was named for, scraped the top two or three feet of the whole plant, (which was basically the size of the tower district,) into sealed containers, and sent it out to the middle of nowhere,,, --the land was then only usalble as a giant car refurbishing facility...)
-I passed the containers full of Manville dirt on the way out here when I moved last summer... I could tell by the polka music and slurred profanity coming from them... 'yep, that's 'Jersey...

'But Y'all have humidity out there, we don't. It's the humidity that makes it unbearable,' (I get that all the time...)

Now, look when you're really german, over six foot, and over two hundred,,,, and hate hot weather???
It doesn't matter whether it's a dry or moist hot...
(But I smile and nod... you know, don't want to freak folks out in the heat...
they's like aggreevated hound dogs...
just take the nicest little church lady, get her going about the heat, tell her that it's not this bad back east, (where the pagans live,,) -and she'll wrap a three rack set of chairs around you in 'Jesus name...

Then folks began to explain Swamp Coolers...
'Swamp coolers add moisture to the air, drops it a good ten to twenty degrees...'
----I've not worked up the guts to ask what the difference between 100degrees, with moisture added (dropping it down to the mid eighties,)
---and 'mid eighties with Humidity' is... (We call it the triple 'H' back east.. 'Hazy, Hot, and Humid'...)
(We get rain all year, usually on the weekends to mess up the dirtcar season...
-it's the stuff of nightmares for the over 100degree dry heat set, out here...'Triple 'H')

--and then they go and create it with a swamp cooler...
(rock on, Garth...)

It's a quiet world, out here, though....
In the winter, it's cold and foggy...
(well, not like two degrees cold, (god I wish...)
---but you know, cold enough that you may want to wear a shirt when the windows are all open (shorts are still fine...) it's only the 30's or 40's...
--But it's quiet, folks are just sitting indoors, shivering and chattering away, watching pictures of Wai-ki-ki, and things slow down..

Now its the inverse...
Too hot, and all that is going on is airconditioner hum...
It's like wandering around the trainyards, without the air tank bleader snaps... one big fan compressor white noise...

The whole world is a big version of those weird little boxes that the counsellors would put outside their doors at the crisis office,(you can't hear anything going on in the room... just this strange sound like a distant cement mixer off behind the XFile silos...)

Ya can't let folks know that you're from back east when it's really hot... (they won't complain proper...)

Lots a times they'll come up to you, look at ya, and say,
'...yessir, hot one today, isn't it, whew,,' -break out a handkerchief, mop a pate,,,,
and then you say,
'yep, sure is,,,'
---but they hear it in your voice.

-'where ya from, son?'
-'ah, New York, actually, around those 'parts...'

-and it kicks in, just like that, they got ya,
'...oh heck, out here, it's a dry heat, man this is nothing, compared to what you folks have back there,,, all that humidity,'
(I don't get into it with the whole 85degrees with moisture is just 85degrees with humidity, thing,,, being polite.'

--'heck, you been out here for a Fresno Summer yet?'
-'no sir, first time,'
(I don't tell him that I drove across the country, mid summer, in the desert in a pickup with no AC...)

--'oh you wait, you wait and see, don't know if you're going to make it through this one,,, boy, this one will teach you a thing or two...'

(It always has that judgement to it,,, like I've done something to aggrivate the Almighty, and am about to sit under a heavenly magnifying glass and be fried, like an ant, by a huge sadistic 8 year old called 'god.'
--and it's because, you guessed it, 'I'm not from here..'

If I don't say much, (thinking of writing out words, and feigning mute or something,)
He'd a gone on about how hot it used to be, how hot it was, and there'd be some genunine pissing and moanin' going on, (just like back home, which would be fine with me... two male pattern baldness gophers sitting there cussing the heatwaves...)

(but, you, know, there's this feeling like you have to be near beat do death by life out here, for about thirty to seventy years to prove that you're tough enough to be a californian, like you called his grandmother a 'surfer' or something...)
-the only way they'll let you off the hook is if you were a stunt man for 'Grapes of Wrath.'

--It only gets worse:
'...yep, made the trip in that pickup over there, rebuilt her three times along the way, and had two cats with me in the cab the whole time.... female cats at that...'

'Cats,,, young man did you say CATS'
'yessir, one fixed, one orig. condition..., panting like a couple of..'

'-What's wrong with Dogs?'
'..nothin I suppose... don't want them in the cab with me and the cats, you see the size of that cab? -why the litter box alone was...'

'-ya know, I had an uncle who drove out here from Minnesota, but he had dogs... ya know what I mean, dogs... not cats...'

'ahuh...'

'you say you were from.....'
'-New York.'
'Liberal?'
'-well sir, truth be told I'm....'
'...liberal..'
'-yessir, hope to say.'

'and you got Jesus stickers on that NewYork, 'Cat drivin with', liberal truck of yours over there?!'
'-uh, yessir, that's correct.'
'and that music?'
'-Imogene Heap, sir.'
'Heap of What??!'
'-Imogene Heap, cute kid, ...English.'

'Son, that don't make no sense.'

(Right about then, I start discussing the finer points of Swamp Coolers and '85degrees with moisture added' versus 'Humidity'...)

Yep, totally different.
it's a dry heat.
(Here's to cats, liberals, Brown Eyed British vocalists, and while we're at it, go Yanks.)