To those of you who know me well, you know I hate the Kansas summer. My dad loved heat, and with each passing year, I hope I will become more like him, but if anything, my hatred of the heat just gets worse. I’m trying to smile as I write this, so maybe something in this column will take your mind off this beastly heat for awhile and bring you a smile.
Last Sunday after church, a western Kansas rancher and a visitor from Washington State struck up a conversation and the topic naturally turned to how dry it was there in western KS. “Does it ever rain in this blooming state?” the visitor asked. “Oh sure,” answered the rancher. “Do you remember the story in the Bible where it rained for forty days and forty nights?” “Yes, I’m familiar with Noah’s flood,” replied the visitor. “Well,” began the rancher, “That time we got about 2 ½ inches.”
A new friend of mine, a recent transplant to Kansas from a cooler climate, shared with me some pages from his diary;
June 10th – Just moved to Kansas, now this is a state that knows how to live; beautiful sunny days and warm, balmy evenings. It’s beautiful, I love it here!
June 14th – Really heating up, got to 100 today. Not a problem, I live in an air-conditioned home, and drive an air-conditioned car. What a pleasure to see the sun everyday like this.
June 20th –I had the backyard landscaped with western plants today, lots of rocks and cactus. No more mowing the lawn for me. Another scorcher today, but I love it here.
July 3 – The temperature hasn’t been below 100 all week. How do people get used to this heat? At least is kind of windy though. Getting used to this heat is taking longer than I expected, but I’ll get there.
July 5 – I missed Lomita my cat sneaking into the car when I left for work this morning. When I got to the car after work, she had roasted to death, now my hot car smells like grilled cat! Good ol’ mister sun strikes again.
July 7 – The air conditioner shot craps and the repairman charged me $200 to drive by and tell me he needed to order parts. I’ve been sleeping outside on the patio for three nights now; a $225,000 house and can’t even go inside! Lomita is the lucky one; why did I ever come here?
July 10 – Got the AC fixed; it cost $500 and drops the temperature down to 85. If one more wise guy asks “Hot enough for you today?” I’m going to strangle them. I hate this stupid state!
July 12 – My car smells like fried cat, my new air conditioner barely gets the inside of my house cooler than my morning coffee, my new cactus can’t even live in this blasted heat, and the weather report might as well be a recording! Does it ever rain in this God forsaken place?
July 14 – Welcome to HELL! Forgot to crack the car windows at work today and since it was 115, the windshield blew out. When the repairman came to fix it, guess what he asked me??? “Hot enough for you today?” …It cost my sister $1500 to bail me out of jail. What kind of demented idiot would want to live in a place like this?
Just when you thought you’d heard every possible way to finish this sentence “Its soo dry that…, let me offer a couple more;
It’s so dry that the Baptists are sprinkling, the Methodists are using wet-wipes, the Presbyterians are giving rain checks and the Catholics are praying the wine will turn back to water.
It’s so dry that the river only runs twice a week.
And finally, it’s so dry that they’ve had to close two lanes at the local swimming pool and swimmers are actually encouraged to pee in the pool.
As a farm boy in Ohio, the Ohio State fair was the perfect end to summer. We took our flock of registered sheep and stayed there for most of the fair. Just up the midway from the sheep barn was a dunk tank manned by a clown calling himself BoBo. Now BoBo knew just exactly how to taunt kids to the point where they would spend their life savings just to try to dunk him. His famous one -liner that I can still remember echoing across the midway into the wee hours of the morning was “BoBo, High and Dry!” BoBo, I feel your pain! Continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors anyway!
Steve can be contacted by email at [email protected].
