I’m Fixing to Find a Shade Tree

I’m fixing to find a shade tree.

That’s what folks used to do when it got real hot. After all, you couldn’t go inside to get cool because it would be hotter in there than it was outside. There wasn’t a thermostat on the wall to adjust the temperature by. About all you could do was open the windows and pray for a shower to cool things down, or go sit underneath that shade tree and fan yourself with one of those square fans with a flat wooden handle and a picture of Jesus on it.

I remember one summer back in 1949 when it got so hot and dry the well dried up and we had to walk down to the branch and tote buckets of water back to the house. It got so bad after that that we had to dam up the branch because it had diminished down to a mere trickle.

A few days later it got so hot that our old mule died. His name was Albert, and he had taken to eating briars because they were about the only thing left growing with a little moisture in them.

Some folks said that was what killed him, but I knew better—it was the heat. He was just standing out there in the middle of the pasture, not moving a muscle, and as I shaded my eyes from the sun with my hand and gazed out toward him through the shimmering heat waves, he just keeled over—dead as a hammer.

It was so hot until the dogs wouldn’t come out from underneath the house. They stayed under there all day long with their mouths open and their tongues lolling out of the sides of them as little droplets of moisture dripped off them. My Uncle Curvin told me dogs couldn’t sweat and that was the way they perspired.

When I got down on my knees and looked into their dusty lair to check on them, they would wag their tails like they were thanking me for looking in on them, and little puffs of dry dust would rise up when their tails thumped against the ground.

It’s been so hot lately that it got me to thinking about that summer in 1949, about how things have reversed themselves in that instead of going outside to cool off, we now go inside to cool off.
In fact, I’m fixing to go inside and turn that thermostat down right now.