A story of tails and tales

Even little Huey was so hot that he was ready to cut short his morning walk. Our scruffy 18-year-old terrier usually jogs right along on the walk around our neighborhood. But Sunday morning he was ready to turn back after a couple of blocks.

It’s hard to believe that school is getting underway and the temperature is a hundred or more. In Oxford, where my wife teaches 4th grade, kids had to have indoor recess one day last week because the principal concluded it was too hot to be outside.
I don’t remember that ever happening when I was growing up in Missouri. During my first four years of elementary school, I would walk each morning about a quarter-mile down our graveled lane to the county road to wait for the school bus.
The bus wasn’t air conditioned and it was a 13-mile ride to school.
It didn’t matter much though, because the school wasn’t air conditioned either. The windows would be opened wide, and the teachers would keep a fly swatter handy to deal with unwanted visitors, often wasps, that wandered into the classrooms.
Jenny says that before I get too far into this “poor me” tale, I should mention that school didn’t start until after Labor Day then and that Missouri is not Mississippi. There were no hundred-degree days in September.
I guess she has a point; she sure knows how to take the edge off a good story.
Anyway, there was a good reason why kids weren’t in school in August.
We were a farm community, and children helped out on the farms. School didn’t start until the crops were harvested and the hay was in the barn.
Last week I was thinking about how much my father fretted over the weather when I was growing up. He always was worried that his corn would be “burnt up” because of the heat and the lack of rain.
I don’t see how farmers can cope with weather like what we’ve had this summer in Mississippi.
Jenny and I have had a hard time keeping young trees and plants from withering in the heat, even though we’re watering them.
Our pink Knock-Out roses that were planted over the winter around our patio were beautiful in the spring, but they’ve been producing more yellow leaves than flowers in the heat of summer.
And a red maple tree planted about the same time near the driveway leafed out in the spring. It seemed to be faring well and we were looking forward to its red leaves this fall. But last week, many of the green leaves turned to brown despite regular watering.
We can understand the farmers’ frustration with the changing weather patterns.
But not everything has withered in the summer heat. Jenny has lots of perennials in her flower beds and daily watering has kept them producing flowers.
And the Bermuda grass in the yard is thriving, so much so that it needs to be mowed every week.
If old Huey thinks taking a walk in hundred-degree heat is tough, he ought to try pushing a mower.
Now that would be a tale.

T. Wayne Mitchell, publisher of the Gazette, can be reached by phone at 662-534-6321 or by e-mail at publisher@newalbanygazette.com.