Published July 17, 2005 in the Hibbing Daily Tribune
By Aaron J. Brown
By the time you read this, I may have melted. Either that or keeled over from all the cholesterol in the eggs I’ve been cooking on the sidewalk. I just hope someone removes the cake I’m baking in my Buick before it gets too dry. I hate it when that happens.
Winter-hearty Northern Minnesota residents find themselves unprepared for the heat we’ve had lately, myself included. Sure, some own heavy-duty air conditioners and everyone has at least one of those giant box fans used to make Darth Vader voices. But even the cool-aired among us must eventually flee our climate controlled Eden to brave the sun’s searing radiation. It is then that we, the flannel-clad neo-Norse, realize how frustrating it is when we tell people from the South that zero degrees in January is “pretty warm out.” It isn’t. That’s cold, and now it’s hot.
Really, really hot.
As much as I love summer, a sustained dry heat wave like this one gives me a “Grapes of Wrath” vibe that I don’t like. If this keeps up, the family and I might have to load into a van to pick peaches out West. Then some sheriff could order a posse to roust the “Minnesoties” out of their shantytown so they can’t vote or buy land.
A week like this reminds me that Northern Minnesota is one of the few places in the country where you can expect 150 degrees difference between the highest summer temperatures and the lowest winter digits. I remember a junior high science teacher telling us that this diverse climate made our region “temperate.” That makes about as much sense now, as I smell like a gym towel at my computer, as it did when I was 14 (also probably smelling like a gym towel, but for different reasons).
By now, we’ve all seen the hard-hitting news features showing us how bad it is to leave babies, dogs and candy bars in hot cars with the windows up. (OK, I added candy bars). If you didn’t know, cars get lethally hot when you leave them in the summer sun. But all the reports seem to focus on hot cars that are parked. They include no warnings for hot cars on the go.
Let me explain. Like a lot of American families we have two cars. One car has a CD player and a working air conditioner. The other has a sardonic black square where a stereo could go if the car’s value exceeded that of a car stereo, and an air conditioner that worked great when Clinton was in office.
Guess which one I drive.
Point is, my commute out to the steamy woods where I live is about the same as sitting in a parked car for a half hour. Sure, I can roll the windows down. And you can switch your hair dryer from low to high if you want, too. I emerge from these car rides looking like I ran a marathon, but find no shiny foil blanket to welcome me.
I suppose this is all good for the tourists. It’s always nice to jump into a crystal blue Minnesota lake and not go into hypothermic shock. I just hope our lovable out-of-area friends understand that this isn’t how it usually goes around here. Our 10,000 lakes came from a pack of rough and tough glaciers that rolled through here some time back. And they might come back, just as soon as this heat wave finally breaks.
Stay cool out there.
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune.