Weather

Friday Firesmith – Summer and September

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As a teenager, I worked in the fields during the summer, and heat was never an issue. After working under the sun for a month, all heat feels the same, all humidity is normal, sweat is the uniform of the day, and sundown is quitting time.

This prepared me for working on the road, in triple digit heat, with asphalt that’stwo hundred fifty degrees as it comes out of the spreader. Get close enough to the asphalt and even the gnats will leave you alone.

Working on bridges usually meant there was water, but those structures that spanned overflows or just large holes that sometimes heldwater, it was like being in the bottom of a well with a heat lamp positioned over it.

Heat in South Georgia, for the better part of my life, simply was.

September is here, and last year it didn’t cool off for most of the month. This year, the first days of September have gifted us with temperatures in the mid to upper sixties, and it is heaven.

I did some limb cutting to get debris away from the fence the Big Pine fell on. And then I had to replace the fence. I started early in the morning and worked until noon. The heat nearly got me. The first part of August is unkind, to say the least, and at sixty-five, I feel my age more and more the higher the temperature rises.

Through the years, the new hires got younger and younger, and softer and softer. The generations raised on the inside of houses, nestled comfortably with their screens and air conditioning, were not accustomed to working outside in the heat, and some could not. Some would not. Management began allowing employees to sit in their truck with AC and cell phones, while work went unobserved. Being out there in the heat with the work was the only way to learn how its done, but the younger generation wanted only to stay out of the heat.

In good truth, theywere never trained to endure. I’ve watched grown men in their early twenties panic when they’ve been in the heat for too long. I’ve had employees quit rather than sweat. I’ve seen men who claimed they’ve played football in high school go home from work because they were too hot.

I went a few months without a work truck at one point. I had someone drop me off at the asphalt plant with my lunch cooler, I would catch the first truck out at six in the morning, then catch the last truck back in at seven in the evening. Someone would pick me up and take me back to the office, and by the time I got home I had time to eat supper, take a shower, and go to bed.

They forgot me one night, and I had to walk to a payphone and call for a ride to come get me. The guy that forgot me had gone out drinking so when he finally arrived he was almost too drunk to drive. After that incident, they got me a truck. It had a hole in the floorboard and didn’t have air conditioning. But it was a ride.

September. Cool breezes and nice sunrises. And the memories of summer, easing into the past again.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – Hurricane Season 2025

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Back when I was a kid, we all went to the Smith’s house when a hurricane came through South Georgia. It rained hard, the wind blew, but the adults wouldn’t let us look out of the windows at all. The lights flickered and did not go out. It was boring.

A hurricane came through Valdosta Georgia back in 1985 or 86, and because I was renting an apartment I didn’t care. I walked to the store to get some beer and realized drinking while being outside wasn’t a good idea, and for that matter, being outside was a bad idea. It was fun, kinda, to lean into the wind like I could.

I was sent to Mississippi in 2005, on the heels of Katrina, and that was life altering. I got there right after the power came on, and the people who owned motels and hotels reserved some rooms for people doing damage assessments so I never slept on a floor or in my truck. I met people who had lost everything, with no way of finding out if their families had survived, or if everyone else was dead. I went to a place where the smell of death filled the air.

Michael just missed us in 2018, but hammered my sister’s place and hometown of Blakely, Georgia. Then in 2023, Idalia hit and flooded my property, which killed many trees. In an odd way, I think that hurricane helped convince Aqaba that living inside was better than not. But by last year, when Helene hammered us, Aqaba was an inside cat.

Helene was the first, and the last, major hurricane I rode out. I had plans to evacuate, rented rooms, had a place to board the animals, and everything was set. Helene’s predicted track shifted west, I cancelled reservations, then she moved back to the east, hard. It was too late to find a place to run.

The storm passed directly over my house at about one in the morning. For about four hours all I could hear was wind and rain. At one point, it was so dark I started hallucinating colors. The wind rode in through the woods like waves at the beach, getting louder and louder, then receding, with the crack of  murdered trees punctuating the sounds. I lay in bed, fully clothed with my shoes on, waiting for the roof to go, or for a tree to come down on the house.

            At one point I was pretty sure I had made a serious mistake in judgement (I had) and was going to pay for it (I didn’t) but once the wind speed hit one hundred thirty eight there was nothing to do but lie there and wait. T’was a long night.

Right now, Erin is still in the Atlantic, heading north with two other systems cranking up. I enter the teeth of the 2025 Hurricane Season having rode out a high CAT 3 Hurricane. I will not do that again. Ever.

Whatever comes out of the ocean this year, I am running from it.

Take Care,

Mike