Springtime in the Midwest

An essay on screwed-up weather patterns...

I grew up near Sacramento, California and generally speaking the weather was OK.

It never got that cold in the winter, but during a summer day triple digits were not uncommon, although people said it was bearable because it was a “dry” heat, which (and I’ve used this joke before, but it was years ago and I believe in recycling) is the same thing they say about Hell.

The “dry” heat in places like Sacramento, Phoenix and Denver always makes me think: “This is what it would feel like if I could somehow get my head inside a microwave and turn it on” which apparently microwave manufacturers have taken into account because you can’t fire up microwaves with the door open.

But if you could, by now you know someone would have tried to dry their hair by sticking their head in a microwave and while it might be a tragic loss for some family, whenever I hear about someone dying because they wanted to take pictures of a tidal wave or see the inside of an active volcano or shoot a video of a tornado coming down the street, I think: “Hmmm…natural selection is still thinning the herd.”

But enough about my possible sociopathic tendencies and back to the weather.

In Sacramento if you could somehow make it through a summer day, you’d always have a cool summer night to look forward to, which is part of why most the cars I could afford at the time did not have air conditioning; a fact that will become important later. (Trust me, although past history suggests maybe you shouldn’t.)

San Diego weather

My next stop in Life’s Journey was San Diego and the weather there was so mild that when I lived in an apartment complex that had a pool, people swam in that pool on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, which makes you think: “This is Paradise” right up until you experience your first earthquake.

Mine was the El Centro quake of 1979.

Semi-related story alert

So I Googled “El Centro earthquake” because I wanted to make sure it was in 1979 and Google responded with stories about the El Centro earthquake of 1979, the El Centro earthquake of 1940, the El Centro earthquake of 2010 and the El Centro earthquake of 2021 (earlier this month) which would seem to indicate maybe God doesn’t want people living in El Centro, especially since one of the quakes happened on Easter Sunday.

(I believe the above picture depicts what an El Centro real estate agent would call a “fixer-upper.”)

In my personal opinion, if you live in El Centro you should pack your shit and skedaddle, although that advice is coming from someone who continues to live in a city where ice storms (the single most screwed-up weather event on the Screwed-Up Weather Event Menu) happen on a semi-regular basis.

A good ice storm means you can’t go six inches outside your front door without crampons, a guide rope and a competent Sherpa and usually means the loss of power because the ice makes tree limbs heavy and they snap off and take out power lines which means you have no choice but to go eat all the ice cream in your freezer before it melts, even though it’s cold enough to hang a side of beef in your living room and now that I think about it, may be an excuse to eat ice cream.

Nevertheless, if you ask me why I’m 20 pounds overweight, my answer will be: “Ice storms.”

Back to my personal El Centro quake

When the El Centro quake of 1979 hit, I was on an upper floor of the San Diego Union’s mostly glass building. I went and stood in a doorway which is what they tell you to do in an earthquake (like that was going to save my ass if the building collapsed).

While standing in that doorway I looked through a series of glass-walled offices until I spotted Bob Caldwell, an editorial writer who came to San Diego from Cleveland and thought he’d made it to Shangri La.

As we stared at each other while the building did the Peppermint Twist, I had enough sense of humor left over to say: “I bet you wish you were in Cleveland now” and we both started laughing.

BTW: If you ever get to sit next to me on an airplane, you’re in luck. I won’t save you if the airplane crashes (that would require Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and a Hollywood special-effects team), but I feel confident I’ll say something funny on the way down and we’ll both go out laughing.

It’s not much, but would you really rather go out screaming: “Oh my God, oh my God why didn’t I just admit I was gay and live life the way I wanted to?” (Or whatever deep, dark secret you’ve been hiding all your life and I’m pretty sure we all have one of those and if you don’t, you now seem kinda boring. Work on it.)

Anyway…

The relative mildness of San Diego weather was reinforced when I turned on the local news one drizzly day and the over-amped weatherman said: “Don’t go out in the storm if you don’t have to.”

Basically: “Run for your lives, the pavement’s damp!!!”

Kansas City weather

OK, so I accept a job offer in Kansas City and drive my air-conditionless BMW out from California over four days – San Diego to Sacramento, Sacramento to Salt Lake, Salt Lake to Denver, Denver to KC – and on that last leg, start off in a blizzard, which becomes an ice storm, then hail and a giant-ass thunderstorm and off in the distance I see a tornado heading across the wind-swept plains to rearrange some trailer park and wonder: “What next, a plague of toads?

Which wasn’t all that far off.

I had never lived in a place that was humid (remember, I was used to “dry” heat) and never knew air could have texture like a bowl of Jell-O just starting to firm up, a phenomenon best described by baseball player Ichiro Suzuki when being interviewed by, I’m gonna say Bob Costas. Ichiro was asked if his Seattle Mariner teammates had taught him any English since arriving in the US and the elegant and dignified Japanese ballplayer said:

“Kansas City in August is hotter than two rats fucking in a wool sock.”

While Costas tried not to rupture his spleen laughing, a stone-faced Ichiro added:

“I have very bad teammates.

As I learned over the next few decades, weather in the Midwest will do whatever it feels like, whenever it feels like it. On a windy day I could walk around the block and ask myself, “How the hell can you walk around the block and have the wind in your face on all four sides?”

Warm day in the middle of Winter?

No problem.

Cold day in the middle of Summer?

Got you covered.

Not long after I moved to Kansas City I was driving my air-conditionless BMW (told you it would come up again) down the freeway when a thunderstorm hit and it was raining so hard the drops were hitting the pavement and bouncing back up a couple feet, but it was also incredibly hot and humid so my windshield was fogging up from me sweating like I was in a Turkish steam bath, being questioned about my internet search history.

But when I decided to roll down my window maybe a half-inch to get some semi-fresh air circulating, it was like someone stuck a firehouse in the window, four inches from my head.

So…

Even though it was a billion degrees with a thousand percent humidity, the only way I could keep driving and see where I was going was turning on the defrost, which made it even hotter inside my BMW steam bath, a situation so screwed-up, I started laughing. (Maybe the people of El Centro aren’t the only ones missing a message from God.)

In all things, context matters

After six-plus decades on this Earth, I’ve come to believe context is pretty much everything.

Normal is boring until you get the flu and feel like you got hit by a truck and spend a night barfing your guts out and stress-testing the gaskets on your toilet – then normal is incredibly awesome.

Death is to be avoided at all costs until someone from the Inquisition (and everything I know about the Inquisition is based on Monty Python sketches) is sticking hot pokers up your backside and then Death seems like a decent option.

And now making a giant metaphorical leap; the same goes for weather.

Which was brought home to me when I had a train layover in Chicago and it was so cold and windy I went into a bar for coffee…a first…and heard two native Chicagoans discuss the upcoming Bears game:

“You goin’out to see da Bearss on Sunday?”

“Prolly not…unless it’s a nice day like diss.”

And yes, that’s based on those Saturday Night Live sketches about Chacago Bearss fans which I found uncannily accurate and remind me of the time I was looking for the players’ entrance at Wrigley Field which turned out to be located at the right-field corner of the ballpark, but I asked a cop for directions at the left-field corner and he replied:

“Youse could not posssibly be any furder from wear youse wissh to be.”

Back to those Bearss fans: if you’re used to the Hawk screaming in off Lake Michigan, it was a nice day. Me? I got back to KC and ordered the biggest down coat in the L.L. Bean catalogue.

All this was weather rumination was brought on by the fact that earlier this week (pretty sure it was Tuesday) at 8:15 AM my neighborhood looked like this:

And at 1:02 PM it looked like this:

Just your average day in the Midwest that required a knit hat, down coat and flip flops. “Be prepared” is the Boy Scout motto and I’m pretty sure whatever Boy Scout came up with it lived in the Midwest.