From the Crow’s Nest
by CLINT YOUNTS
Dang, it’s hot! How hot is it? Well, if you were to ask some fancy-pants up in the big city, he’d probably reply, “According to the thermometer in my Lexus, it is a blistering 108 degrees.” Now if you were to pose that question to a country boy, perhaps a true Texan like myself, the answer to your inquiry would be much more colorful, like “It’s hotter’n two cats fighting in a burlap sack.” Or you might hear “It’s hotter’n a mess of collard green on the back burner,” or “hotter than a firecracker with a short fuse.”
I’m not sure why Texans and other folks fortunate enough to live in the south have to respond to simple questions in such an illustrated way, but I suppose it’s ‘cause we just don’t have the correct answer. Plus, we are born with the gift of gab. If we can’t dazzle someone with brilliance, then we baffle them with bull. Why give a simple answer when we can leave the inquiring stranger with a vivid image in his head and still no answer to his question?
How hot is it? Well, pardner, it’s hotter than two sumo wrestlers in a stalled Smart Car. It’s hotter’n a pot of chili in Terlingua. It’s so hot, I saw a squirrel dipping his nuts in ice cream. It’s hotter than a hot-wired Honda! Man, I’m sizzlin’ like bacon fat in a skillet! I’m sweatin’ like a brood mare in heat!
How hot is it, you ask? Well, it’s so hot that I just bought some rib-eyes at HEB and by the time I got home, they were medium-well. It’s hotter’n a buffalo turd in a campfire. It’s hotter than Oprah in a 4th of July parade. Then there’s the oldie, but goodie: It’s hotter’n blue blazes!
The most common saying down here in South Texas when commenting on the weather is “It’s hotter’n hell out here!” That says it all. If it’s hotter than hell, it must be real hot, right? Well, we don’t really know how hot it actually is down in Hades, do we? Folks up in New Jersey say 90 degrees is blazing hot while we Texans put our shirts back on when it gets that cool. Just how hot is it down in the underworld? Inquiring minds want to know.
I watched the Weather Channel for hours and never heard what the high temperature was in hell. I searched on-line, but I was only able to find the weather in Hell’s Canyon, Idaho and Devil’s Lake, N.D. Locally, Jim Spencer will inform us about the temperatures in the Austin area, but he has never mentioned the current high in Hades. How are we going to know if it is hotter’n hell?
Well, being an investigative reporter like I am, I decided to find out which place is hotter, Texas or hell. So I called a buddy of mine who works at the prison up in Huntsville to see if he had the phone number of any recently executed inmates. He told me of one fella who had a fancy iPhone that he kept up in his descending colon, and since they stopped using Old Sparky for executions, we figured the phone should still work. Might as well give it a shot.
I dialed the number, but I was out of network. Being a smart fella, I drove out to Purgatory Road and tried again, figuring I’d be a little closer to the target, and sure enough, the call went through. Some guy named Osama answered, saying he won the phone in a hot poker game. I asked him, “How hot is it down there?” and he said he wasn’t sure. He did say it was really hot, but it was a dry heat. When I asked if he had a thermometer, he got testy with me and replied, “I need a thermometer like I need a hole in my head”.
I asked him if he could find out how hot it actually was there, so he asked his buddy Adolf who replied, “It’s hotter than Kim Kardashian’s diary. It’s hotter than a pretty ewe on prom night in Oklahoma.” Osama then transferred me to the main office where somebody named Lou Siffer told me they don’t report the heat index down there because it tends to depress the residents. So I asked him, off the record, “Just how hot is it?” The old boy replied, “It’s hotter than Texas down here!” Now, that’s hot!!
Clint Younts tries to cool himself down by jumping into his not-so-cool poolwater. Anything to get out of work! When he does work, he tries to stay in the AC at a veterinary clinic.
