At least for the summers, I’ve been trying to move out of this darn place for almost 60 years. Never much of a fan of mercury’s broiling tantrums stretching from early July to mid-October.
I’ve been keeping track. This year’s a bit different. We had 14 minutes of spring and many uncalled-for intrusions of hot weather early. Normally, it gets hot right around the Fourth of July and heat stays with us for about an uncanny 100 days. Then, yippee coyote, it’s pleasant in Santa Clarita for 265 days.
Ish.
A darling dear friend tried to convince me that this heat nonsense some people call “Summer” is but a recent event. He blamed the usual suspects: Climate Change, polar bear farts, Republicans, confident heterosexual white males, my rusting pickup truck. Wearing another hat as local historian, I assured him it’s been blankety-blank stupid hot here since before the internal combustion engine and that there’s no record of Ursus maritimus making the 913?? ZIP code his home. In fact, if I were asked, on my final breath, to name my favorite Mighty Signal story, it would come from the 1930s. Then editor/publisher, A.B. “Dad” Thatcher, wrote a little ditty in his front-page column, the Jin Jer Jar. It was during a Depression-era heat wave and an old cowboy walked into The Signal office, then on Main Street. The cattle puncher came in to present “Dad” with a news scoop.
“It was so hot yesterday, I saw a coyote chasing a rabbit,” said the cowpoke. “And they were both walking …”
Farmers that summer quipped they were going into the dried fruit business.
For years, I’ve been trying to vamoose out of here, at least when summer’s heat is on broil. Right after high school, a chum and I investigated renting a house in Malibu. We drove to the beach, searching the telephone posts for “House For Rent” signs. That’s how you advertised back then — handwritten cardboard signs nailed to utility poles. The nerve of those wealthy beach bums back in 1969. Three-bedroom house, fridge, stove, furniture, supply your own beach bunnies, on — that’s — ON — the beach: $500 a month. Outrageous. Were we the sons of the Aga Khan?
I was young, ferocious and immortal. Used to get in a run in the middle of an August day, 111 degrees. No shirt. No sun block. Run 5 miles. Leap over aged fallen Presbyterians and rattlesnakes. I’m approaching middle age now. I wait until after 11 o’clock at night to pay $19 for a pint of ice cream at 7-Eleven not because I’m afraid of passing out but don’t want people to see me sobbing in the middle of the day.
Back at the ranch, we had an Olympic-size pool and the nearest shady oak was 25 yards away. We had an August where EVERY day was over 100 degrees with a two-week stretch where the daytime high never dropped below 108. Are you ready for a Worthless Sons Of The Wealthy Landowners Pity Story? We had to buy two 100-pound blocks of ice to cool the pool down. Icebergs in Newhall in August.
And you ungrateful kids today think you have it tough.
That was the summer my bride was on a game show and won a year’s supply of whiskey sour mix. The actor, Victor McLaglen, in the Western, “Fort Apache,” played Sgt. Festus Mulcahy. The sarge was ordered by Henry Fonda to destroy three 55-gallon barrels of cheap, semi-poisonous Indian reservation whiskey. McLaglen saluted, sighed, held up a tin cup and poignantly told his fellow sergeants: “‘Destroy it!’ he says. Well boys. We’ve a man’s work ahead of us this day!”
I seem to recall, sitting by the pool, watching the ice melt in a blink and the whiskey sour cocktail soon bubbling in summer’s early evening setting sun.
Darn summer. It can’t even rain right. Every once in a while, we’ll get summer precipitation. Rain drops shouldn’t be boiling, should they? You should feel refreshed, not like you’re wrapped in ski clothes, sitting in a sauna. Have the weather gods never read an ounce of poetry? Rain should be cool. It shouldn’t arrive in the form of devilish golf balls.
“Golf balls” is the universal measurement for hail. “Hail the size of golf balls,” weathermen always sagely say. Never, “… hail the size of albino gorilla boogers,” “cocktail olives,” “snapping turtle eggs,” or “Michelle Obama’s …” achoo, had to sneeze, couldn’t finish the sentence.
We had a freak hailstorm in 1955 where thousands of migrating swallows were killed in Canyon Country.
We had a heat wave in 1955 where the mercury bubbled to over 111. Back then, we were ag country. A little-known fact is that a chicken’s body temperature is not 98.6. It’s 105. A degree warmer, they keel over and die. Local farmers added another chore to their Things To Do list — Water The Chickens.
Late August, 1944, was worse. The mercury hit 121 in Downtown Newhall, up to 135 in Canyon Country.
What have I done to offend the archangels that I still don’t have a summer beach house? Sure. I can visit the Pacific. But it strikes me that I should be able to fall asleep, listening to the waves softly crashing on the shore, windows open, sea breeze, it’s 62 degrees. Better? Unlike getting up in the morning in Newhall, my truck isn’t a stain on the driveway, a melted puddle of steering wheel plastic, metal and seat cushion Naugahyde.
You know. I’m Mr. SCV. Besides blubbering and failing to move to the beach every summer since the 19th century, I should really do something about this.
OK. Fine. I will.
Ergo, from this date forward, I declare the maximum daily temperature here, year round, shall be 68 degrees, with soft sea breezes and free lemonade for all.
There. Solved.
Pick up “Naked Came the Novelist,” John Boston’s sequel to “Naked Came the Sasquatch,” at JohnBoston-Books.com. A lifelong SCV resident with 119 major writing awards and nearly 12,000 columns, Boston is Earth history’s most prolific humorist and satirist.
