Still Hot, Still

[rejectomorph]

It has been a day like those days when kites wouldn't fly, and the eucalyptus branches would unexpectedly snap from the heat. Before we got a television, my early summers were all sunburn and peeling skin, and adobe dust clinging to the knees of my Levis. The brown hills were no longer good for sliding, the grasses having dried and gone to seed, filling our socks with foxtails and nettles. We would sit on the porch of the church next to the grocery store, trying to finish Popsicles before they melted and ran deltas of sticky sweetness through the dust that clung to our hands.

Games never lasted long on those days, as we sweated out our energy too fast. It was mostly hanging out. There were initials carved in the bark of trees, and loquats stolen from unguarded backyards, and sometimes there were hose fights, until some parent came out to tell us not to waste water. The season was studded with days like this, when stray dogs with lolling tongues that dripped slowly padded along streets that radiated ripples of bent air. Now I find that on days like this, there is little to do other than remember days like this. Summer perpetuates itself. It is cool only under the ground.

Comments

[rejectomorph]

One hot evening, the big eucalyptus over our back fence dropped a huge branch right on top of our house, which shook as from an earthquake. I missed being under the branch by about two minutes. Eucalyptus trees are very common in the California lowlands. The Southern Pacific Railroad planted thousands of acres of them in the late 19th century, hoping to use them for rail ties, but then found out that they had planted the wrong variety, and the trees were useless for timber. But the trees became popular for landscaping yards, and for windbreaks along orchards, and they also made dandy firewood. Although they are an exotic species, I can't imagine California without them.

Quite a few of our neighbors had loquat trees in their yards. For some reason, the fruit has never been successfully commercialized in California despite the fact that it grows well in the southern, coastal part of the state, so the only loquats we ever had were from gardens. I nearly choked on the slippery seeds more than once.