Memphis summer vs. hell (a ramble through my brain)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So yesterday I’m walking home from school. It’s not too far, takes me about 40 minutes, but it’s hot, sunny, and humid, probably low 90’s. This coupled with the constant stream of severe thunderstorms we’ve been having naturally brings to my mind fire and brimstone.

Now having been told by my grandmother when I was a child that I’d be going to hell along with all of my brothers and sisters(not baptized you see), I’d long ago grown used to the idea. All of that ‘rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints’, right?

So I had 40 minutes to contemplate what hell might be like. It’s not the first time I’ve thought about this. Um, before you read this, please realize this is not to be taken seriously in any theologically meaningful way. Like I said, I figured I’m already going to hell, so if this finalizes the decision…

So first we’ve got the traditional fiery pit of despair. Okay, it’s really, really hot. Got that covered. Been living in Memphis for 22 years. Gotta figure it’ll be hotter than that, but still eventually…

Okay, so then either they say all the sinners will be stuck down there together to suffer, blah, blah, ad infinitum. Right, most of the people I know would be considered ‘sinners’ in the eyes of my grandmother’s church, so that actually sounds like a good idea. Party at my firepit!

Or ‘they’ say Hell is the absence of all companionship. No people, no God, just you. Now that sounds pretty nice too. I’m fairly sure I could be a hermit without too much trouble.

Another possible problem with Hell is the whole torture idea, but as I’ve mentioned here before, if one can adjust to the aftereffects of a grand mal seizure, you gotta figure after a while Hell wouldn’t seem that bad.

But by that time, I’d gotten home to the air conditioning, so my thoughts of Hell and eternal despair pretty much slipped from my mind.

-Lil

2

But it’s not the heat! It’s the humidity!
oh sorry, my wit melted along with half my childhood memories after kilz painting inside a boarded up house for the past week smack dab in the middle of Hell, er I mean Memphis.

I think there is very little difference…one being that Memphis really does exist, and it’s just a wee bit hotter here.

3

It’s the heat AND the humidity, of course.

I guess we should all be thankful it wasn’t this hot during the blackout when no one had air conditioning, but you know what? I’m not thankful. This late-summer Memphis weather totally sucks. And the rainstorms that come through daily don’t last long enough to cool anything off; they just bump the humidity past the level of sanity.

If this is Hell, would Herenton and Wharton be co-devils?

Hmm, come to think of it, A C’s name (note to non-Memphians: those aren’t initials; A C Wharton is his name) could possibly be a veiled reference to the lack of air conditioning in Hell.

4

Possible signs of the coming apocalypse(residents of Chickasaw Gardens, put down your crucifixes, I’m only kidding)

  1. The windstorm(Um, do I really need to point out why?) I will add that the electricity went out for an hour or two all down my street and in Chickasaw last week. We had all the flashlights and lanterns out before it came back on. It was almost a disappointment.
  2. The thought that the star of ** Hercules in New York ** might actually get elected governor of California.
  3. Okay, did anyone notice the high on Sunday is going to be 79(so says channel 3).

Um are the locusts coming on a FedEx plane or what?

-Lil

5

Maybe the “plague of boils” will actually be a plague of eggs boiled on the sidewalk.

I can’t wait for the cool weather this weekend. I want to open my windows and not feel as if I’ve opened the oven by mistake.

6

I used to think about hell walking home from school when I lived in West Tennessee too. Get out now!

7

Cool weather…
Cool weather…
begins chanting in hopes that’ll drive the temperatures down

At this point in time for me, ‘cool’ is now mid-to-low 80’s, with humidity under 50%. It used to be that ‘cool’ weather was mid-to-low 30’s for me.

How living in ‘da South’ has changed my ideas of hot/cold…

<< Wheeeeeee! >>

8

Memphis in the summertime is not actually hell, it is merely a layover on the flight to hell.

The lack of AC during the storm brought two questions to my mind: 1) How did people colonize this area before electricity? and 2) WHY did people colonize this area before electricity?

If it’s any consolation, New Orleans is even more humid.

9

Ugh, talk about humidity. It rained here yesterday, in the mid-90s, and after the rainclouds pulled back there was so much humidity in the air that it was foggy.

If you’ve never actually SEEN humidity, well, it isn’t bad looking. It makes everything look soft and hazy.

But maybe that was the beer…

10

Ha. I’ve seen it so humid in Mobile, Alabama during the summertime that the early morning air becomes supersaturated. Nothing like watching cars pass by leaving contrails in the still morning air.

Then, of course, the sun actually climbs into the sky, the vegetation ignites, and the pavement melts.

11

A sure sign of my insanity:
I actually prefer New Orleans to Memphis when it comes to summer heat. Yeah, I can’t explain it either. I just glory in the heat down there, but swelter up here. And it’s not a tourist thing either, I’ve spent whole summers baking down there.
-Lil

12

Wrong state:

“If I had a plantation in Georgia and a home in Hell, I’d sell the plantation and go home.”
– Eugene P. Gallagher

13

I spent fifteen years in Atlanta and I’ve been in Memphis for six. It’s hotter here.

The worst climate I’ve lived in was in Kansas City, though. Summers like Memphis and winters like Fargo. At least the winters here are relatively mild.

14

Yeah, Atlanta isn’t all that hot. It’s a Southern city for sure, but my little ol’ hometown’s hotter even than Memphis. Memphis does have more extreme heat records…sorta. The numbers are higher, but Montgomery has it beat in the “most consistently fucking miserably hot, even on Christmas day” department.

Not that I’m bragging. I used to pray to see snow.

Mobile’s and New Orleans’s weather are actually mitigated to a point by the proximity of the ocean.