The Blacksmith of Midwestern Spirit, or, a Meditation on Illinois Heat Some May Classify as Complaint

The cliché thing to call heat is oppressive.  This is the “dark and stormy night” of heat adjectives.  Still it fits our precious, familiar, pure-evil Illinois heat.  We assign it the adjective reserved for dictators.  So be it, but there’s far more to hate and admire. 

The melt-the-road-tar days sometimes come in June, they’re always around in July, they start to accumulate come August.  Around here, there’s days you can go outside and it feels like you just opened that preheated oven to stuff in a sheet of cookies—and I hope to Christ you aren’t baking in this Godforsaken heat. 

At first, there’s a feeling out process.  We want to like it outside.  It’s not so hot in the shade, we say.  If I take it easy, I can get this lawn mowed.  I’m just washing the car, the water will help keep me cool.  I’ve seriously got to water the garden.

Not so bad, we think.  Five minutes later, when the tack of sweat starts its thin spread from your chest, your brow, the small of your back, the honeymoon’s over and you’re sick and tired of being outside—not from what you feel now, but what it’s going to be in a half hour when your shirt needs wringed out and the second shower of the day is necessary. 

The hot days have a rhythm, a sound.  When you have to turn on the air conditioner at six in the morning on your way to work, well, that’s just the heat being a pretentious prick.  The sky spans like stretched and faded denim, mostly cloudless, and what little wisps there are look tired and thirsty.  If there’s big clouds, it’s probably the purple ones on the horizon, one of those lovely heat-fed summer storms that will test your gutters and grading. 

The heat is best experienced near some genuine Illinois corn.  Listen—there’s no wind to tickle your ears, and if a glorious breeze does whimper along, it rustles the corn and you feel like you’re in some Midwestern state of Zen.  Then, you hear the bugs, a constant whine of insects singing.  I do not know what they are, but there are a lot of them, and they don’t take a breath.  They seem to love the damn heat.  Your other senses start to engage—a mouth that wants water, a tongue that tastes the salt that gathers from your needs-mopped face full of perspiration.  The humidity settles on your skin like a butterfly, present, but barely there.  Maybe not a butterfly—too gentle.  Imagine fiberglass rolls of insulation soaked with hot water.  Make a coat out of that shit, put it on, go for a jog.  That’s some sweet Illinois heat and humidity.  Forget those pussies out west with that dry heat.  They can have the butterfly metaphor, I suppose.  For our purposes, we’ll go with the heat and itch of good old fashioned pink insulation that you find in old attics and crawlspaces. 

Watch the people fight it, rebel against it.  Screw you heat, I’m playing in this charity softball tournament.  Suck my toes heat, I’m going to run this 5k race.  Kiss my ass heat, I get paid thirty bucks an hour to hold this stop sign at the construction site.  Go somewhere with a lot of people and smell the heat, the sunscreen wafting from mothers basting their children with big green bottles of No-Ad, the SPF so high it could potentially cause an eclipse if the bottle spills.  Brave souls will oil themselves, inviting UV damage, laying out on beaches, cooking like strips of bacon on a griddle of sand, hoping to make themselves look healthy and attractive by enhancing their skin cancer risk.  These are invariably 18 to 35 year old females.  Men that sunbath in this fashion are typically metrosexuals or terrible at sports, swimming, and beach games.

So add the scent of oil, maybe some fresh lakewater, of barbecue jockeys dripping sweat onto bratwurst, the brats in turn dripping fat into open flame.  Add a pinch of body odor, of armpits and musty groins, of greasy hair, and the heat carries an olfactory spice that is Illinois signature.  Other places will have their own heat-fueled stench, I was just picking out a beach because no matter what the temperature, people will be there.  Especially on holidays. 

Fourth of July holiday is typically a showdown—us and our barbecues and family outings and fairs and sports oriented outdoor activities versus July heat.  It’s a staring contest.  Who’s going to blink first?  Who’s going to pass out?  Maybe exhibit heat exhaustion?  I’ll give you a hint concerning the winner—heat doesn’t get heat exhaustion.

Heat effects are cumulative.  Look at your grass.  It doesn’t go dormant and brown right away.  It takes a few days, maybe a couple weeks.  Heat brings its lunchbucket and hardhat for weeks at a time in Illinois summers.

After a few days, spouses will snap at each other a little more quickly.  Heat causes male PMS, that cranky shortness because the heat doesn’t respond to bullying, so you have to take it out on someone.  Right?  Men are not alone. Heat changes traditional “Pre-Menstrual Syndrome” in women into the summer variety where they are capable of acts of domestic terrorism, such as giving you the silent treatment because you didn’t like her chosen “America’s Got Talent” contestant. 

A few days, you’ll find yourself groggy more often.  Wanting to sleep in more.  It tires you, beats you down, dehydrates you.  Unfortunately for Illinois, beer and coffee do not rehydrate. 

Also—not everyone can afford climate control, and several people die.  Ask any survivalist what kills you when shit hits the fan—it’s not starvation, or animal attacks.  It’s “exposure,” the generic term for being incapable of regulating one’s body temperature.  We’re fickle, us humans, wanting that seventy degree range more times than not.  How the hell did we survive this long on this planet?  How did we not skip the Midwest and figure on settling in everywhere else?  The answer is our fertile farmland, but that’s another story.

I ask people about the heat, and the consistent answer I receive is that “You get used to it.”  I have lived here my entire life, and when I go outside in heat of this caliber, I’m immediately upset because I must be wired wrong.  I’m not used to it at all.

At a softball tournament, I watched the beer garden—dirty men wrapping their heads in wet towels, drinking plastic cups of light beer, scurrying for shade as predictably as a flock of birds flies south in formation.  Some of these men lived a mere ten minutes away, but would sit for an hour, two hours, maybe three in the yes, oppressive heat, drinking those tiny beers that got warm quickly (I timed it, the beers stayed cold for probably six minutes before they were merely “cool,” and about three minutes after that would classify as “warm as piss”) and wiping the steady, constant stream of sweat, replacing their vital fluids with alcohol, the afternoon games featuring grown men pulling muscles and cramping from their bodies revolting against the heat like a damn bucking horse sick of the bridle, the slow runs to first, the non-hustle between innings as wet hats were wrung out from being soaked. 

A few smart ones drank Gatorade and water and knew the fight they were in.  Still didn’t stop the scores from staying low and a steady stream of weak hits for fast innings.  These men were worn down far before the late games started.  I must add that a few men wore visors—why they would admit that the sun was problematic by needing a visor, and then exposing the top of their head to said sun, I cannot figure out.  The visor-wearing men somehow, maintained a gel-induced sheen in their hair.  Perhaps the hairdo was so damn pretty, they couldn’t bring themselves to stifle it in a full hat, but still wanted to shield their eyes from deadly UV rays.  “But Fred,” someone is saying out there in reader land, “It’s so hot, those visor-lovers want to ventilate their heads.”  And I have seen dozens of hats with perforated holes that both ventilate and protect the full head from full sun exposure.  And also, do not make the wearer look like total douchebags.  Yes, I’m talking to you every single Division I college football coach. 

I have discussed our heat on many occasions, and it generally follows the same scripts as most weather conversations in Illinois.  There are only a few of them, and as they say there are no new stories, there are no new weather conversations.  You must take into account the quality of weather that just preceded the conversation (a few days, say, three days to a week) the current state of the weather, and the forecast for the immediate future.

A full discussion of the weather, on, say, a long elevator ride, will touch upon all three.  Let’s say, for example, we just had some good weather, not too hot, a dry 80 degree high.  But today, it’s oppressively hot, and it’s going to stay that way for a few more days.  We call this good / bad / bad, one of the finite number of weather scripts to follow.  The rule of thumb is, talk as much shit as you can about the crappy weather, and wish for the glorious state of good weather to return.  How might this sound? (This is a good time to stop and write out this dialogue yourself, as an exercise.  Did you do it?  There.  Good.  Time to check your work now). 

“Man, how about this heat?”

“I would say I was used to it, but not after that gorgeous week we had last week.”

“Yeah, they say we’re in for a few more hot days like this one, but I hope it gets back to last week’s weather real quick.”

If you tacked on the following sentence, which takes into account weather not experienced in a long time, award yourself a bonus: “We sure could use some rain” (One Point) or “It makes me wish we had those damn winter storms again,” (Insert chuckle, Two Points). 

America is lucky to have Illinois guarding the center of the country.  And my Illinois, I mean Illinois—not Chicago.  Everyone who lives here knows they are two separate entities.  It just so happens that the Emerald City of Chicago gets to elect all the officials and make all the laws, etc.  Now I love the Blackhawks and the Bulls and the Bears, I love the city, and I would love to shake my pom pom’s and have everyone get along so we could have a little state solidarity, but that’s just not going to happen, and I’m going to cast my lot with the southern portion of the state should the following hypothetical occur: 

Let’s say we get invaded.  Let’s say some enemy does themselves a hell of a job getting through the coast and start marching on the heart of America, not in a clunky Red Dawn sort of way, but a real blow-out-the-coast, we’re-marching-for-the-middle now invasion.  They would simply not be ready for the militia that lurks here, for the guerrilla warfare that would take place—could you imagine the sheer number of guns that people carry illegally in Illinois, combined with all the hunting gear, combined with the ability to fish and farm, combined with a good old sense of “This is America, Jack!”  Could you imagine these forces in the woods, angry, and the heat comes down like a scorching guillotine?  Do you want to be Invading Forces Batallion X marching through the backwoods near the Kaskaskia River, getting nailed by mosquitoes and primal screams and buckshot?  And did I mention it would be oppressively hot during this particular march, and Illinois would not give a shit?  We eat funnel cakes and ribs in this weather, motherfuckers, and that’s in the smack middle of the open sun during our countless county fairs.  This is the shade and you’re crying for a canteen of water to run up the supply line?  Game over, invasion over.

Perhaps, reader, you are from a Midwestern state and wonder why my discussion of heat is limited to Illinois, when I can throw a rock to Missouri, where the heat index is also brutalizing, and where the spirit of rebellion might be just as strong.  I am from Illinois, and journalistic integrity (along with the laziness and lack of hydration making me hesitant to do field research for this diatribe that not many will actually read all the way through) dictates that I comment only on what I have experienced, and that is within the wonderful borders of the Land of Lincoln.  

So heat can engage us in a variety of ways, and consume our minds and bodies and conversations and passions.  Yes, passions—as my invasion hypothetical above reveals, this is our land, our heat.  We own it, just like those pussies in Phoenix own their “It’s a dry heat” tagline.  My fascination with this subject is rooted in the rebellious spirit I have observed in these hot and humid times, the spirit that drives us out into the heat, consequences and comforts be damned. 

We will live and thrive and smile, and yes, I don’t give a shit how hot it is, I’m going to set fire to the fuse of this explosive fireworks bomb and watch it blow the fuck up in the sky in my backyard and hope the cops don’t come (because this is illegal in Illinois, just like carrying a handgun, we are the last state to call this an illegal act because of those Chicago democrats, no doubt) and in the morning I will walk out into the brutal and dense blanket of hot that descends from the heavens in order to clean up all the little papers and sticks from those fireworks, and I’ll break me a good goddam sweat and then cut the grass just to give the heat the middle finger. 

It’s human spirit like this that delights me, seeing it on display.  Makes me hope for another string of 108 on the heat index, just to see the resilient and joyous abandon of my fellow humans frolicking as if to ridicule our cosmic climate masters.

Global warming?  Bring it on.  Illinoisans are used to it and there aren’t any icecaps for miles around.