Surprisingly cool weather

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Surprisingly cool weather

By S.K. Bardwell
Posted Monday, October 12, 2009

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It always surprises me when it gets cool here. I’m not sure why. It does get cool here - even cold on occasion, although I can’t call our weekend here “cold” in good faith when the Rockies’ divisional championship game has been snowed out.

I think the summers here are so long and so hot – this year’s especially so – that while the rational part of my brain knows it can get cold, the emotional part simply cannot imagine it ever being anything but hot. The emotional part becomes convinced it has always been hot, and will remain so, and concludes that cold and snow and sleet and ice are all fairy tales.

This theory is generally borne out, this time of year, by the arrival of many “cold fronts” that, by the time they get to us, have been all used up and result in a thunderstorm and a slight, almost unnoticeable, lessening of the sweltering heat.

Then a weekend like this last one comes along, and the rational and emotional parts of my brain get to arguing, and I end up badly surprised. I walk around for days, my eyebrows up around my hairline, with the rational part of my brain saying things like, “Of course it gets cold here. Remember Christmas Eve 2004? It snowed. You have pictures.”

Meanwhile the emotional part is blathering on, “You don’t need a jacket. You can’t need a jacket. This is South Texas.” Then the rational part, which tends to be a smartass, says something like, “Do you even own a jacket?”

It’s not easy being me.

The argument breaker, which the rational side of my brain always reels out eventually, is the memory of moving here. That memory is still vivid, with nothing of the fairy tale about it.

Micheal and I both, a lifetime ago, worked in the field of custom plastics fabrication. We started out doing this work in Tulsa, where we met; visited this area on our honeymoon (a hitch-hiking trip in a kinder, gentler time), and discovered we could make way more money here doing the same work we’d been doing in Tulsa.

So we decided to move here. We were at the age where you decide a thing and do it, without needing to think about it or talk about it or even plan it. Most of you will recall that this method sometimes works out well and when it doesn’t, you just do something else. You are not only resilient at that age, you are invincible.

Micheal came down first and got a job, living in a motel in Freeport and saving money until there was enough to rent a house so Dutch and I could join him. Dutch was a German Shepherd who at that time had known me eight years longer than Micheal had.

Being separated for a month was hard when we had just been married, and I imagined what it must have been like for all the newlyweds whose brand-new unions were interrupted by wars and separations of years, or forever.

When I got the signal from Micheal that a house had been procured, I packed up the car and Dutch and I left. I was excited for several reasons – to see my new husband again, to live in a house that was right on the water, and to be in a warm place.

It was November, 1975, and in was bitterly cold in Tulsa when I left. I had to stop every couple of hours to walk Dutch, and I thought happily of how, each time we stopped, it would be a little warmer.

The first stop was just before crossing the Red River and entering Texas. It was still cold. “We haven’t gone far enough yet,” I explained to Dutch.

The second stop was around Corsicana somewhere. Still cold. Dutch began to look doubtful. The third time we stopped, around Conroe, it actually seemed colder than it had when we left Tulsa that morning. I said some really rude things. Dutch paid no attention to me, he was in a hurry to get back in the warm car.

By the time we got to Micheal’s motel in Freeport (after a delay caused my taking the Southwest Freeway out of Houston instead of the South), it was definitely colder than it had been in Tulsa that morning. “What the hell happened?” I demanded of Micheal.

“You must have brought it with you,” he said. “It was great here yesterday.” Dutch looked at me reproachfully, and I briefly entertained the thought of traveling the world, bringing cold to places like the Sahara or Argentina.

The next day we moved into the house Micheal had rented, one of the old stilted houses on Surfside. It was, truly, right on the water – so much so that during high tides, we had to park on the next road up and wade to our steps.

A beach house! I would have thought it was heaven, if it had been warm. Unfortunately, I learned why rent for these houses was so cheap in the off-season: no insulation, no heater and when the wind blew it was able, thanks to the stilts, to blow beneath the house as well as around and over it.

We took my hair dryer to bed with us that night, running it under the covers to warm them (which you should never do, according to the safety warnings). The only one of us not heavily put out was Dutch, who had discovered the beach sported a smorgasbord of dead fish which could be eaten and rolled upon.

I had a job interview the following Monday. There was something still packed in the trunk of the Chevelle that I needed or wanted. I was able to unlock the trunk, after heating the key in a flame for some time, but couldn’t open it because it was iced over. Disgusted, I left for my interview without whatever it was I wanted from the trunk.

Halfway there, the ice melted from the car and the trunk flew open. I stopped and slammed it shut. I’d forgotten whatever it was I wanted in there.