Hotter than a Crawford Ranch
-- The New York Times Op-Ed page, August 28, 2001
AUSTIN -- All those reporters who are always clustered around President
Bush should have been suspicious the minute he started stomping around
his ranch in the middle of August. Instead, sweating and gullible and,
frankly, kind of pathetic, they earnestly reported the president's
rhapsodic remarks about going home to Texas in the summer. They bought
the implication that Texans wouldn't miss a Texas August, even if it
is 110 degrees in the shade (except there's not any shade).
The truth is, nobody with a brain the size of a kumquat stays in Texas
in August. Most of us head to the mountains and cool, dry breezes of New
Mexico, where we like to think we're not considered nearly as arrogant
and obnoxious as we used to be.
Who can blame us for leaving? You don't want to be here in August unless
you enjoy quality time with rattlesnakes, fire ants, sticker burrs,
dust, drought and burning sun. Assuming you don't have a child in the
public schools (which unaccountably begin their year in mid-August), you
try to be elsewhere. Of course there are a few unlucky souls who have to
stay here for the whole month. Sometimes I've been among them. And when
that happens, there's only one pleasure we Texans get from it. That's when
we get to host someone from one of the Northern states or another country
and watch their reaction to the heat.
My husband and I have welcomed guests from Japan who were so overwhelmed
by the heat that they barely made it from the airport to our car, a
Belgian professor who almost passed out on an ill-advised walk, and a woman
from Spain who arrived in our ordinary triple-digit September temperatures
wearing her fall clothes, all of them black. Was this weather unusual? she
asked my husband, fanning herself frantically. Not really, he told her,
although now that she mentioned it, it was a little cooler than usual. Years
later, he still chuckles at the memory.
I certainly don't want to suggest that President Bush is having a little
fun at reporters' expense. Far be it from me to hint he's playing a Lone
Star version of "get the guests." But those reporters should listen
carefully. If he starts telling them it's more temperate than usual this
August, they might suspect they're giving all of us Texans a little light
in all this heat.