A Twilight Zone kind of heat

It wasn’t until I lived in the Southern California desert of the Coachella Valley during the summer that I experienced first hand what it was like to deal with ridiculously hot weather.

People from the Midwest, the Eastern Seaboard and the Deep South always pooh-pooh high temperatures in the West. They say, “But it’s a dry heat.”

As if low humidity heat is somehow cooler than humid heat. Well, maybe that’s true, I don’t know. I’ve been in both types of heat. I spent a couple of steamy summers in New England, and I can testify, they’re no treat. But whether it’s wet heat, or dry heat, they both suck if you ask me. To me, too hot is too hot, any way you slice it.

Long ago as a young reporter in Palm Springs when I first experienced the peak heat of a low desert summer, I noticed a few things I hadn’t seen before. People put towels over the steering wheels of their cars. They had to, or driving was out of the question, the steering wheels were too hot to handle. Just opening the door to get in a sun-baked car was a challenge without burning your hands.

It was about this time that I noticed upon walking out of a refrigerator like, overly air-conditioned office, and into stifling heat outside, that my room temperature eyeballs immediately sensed the oven-hot air. It was as if my eyeballs were an early warning system telling me that I should turn around and go back to where it was cool.

Palm Springs’ high heat outside and the extra cool inside most of its buildings made for an odd man-made mixture of temperature extremes. If someone were to repeatedly cross between indoors and outdoors throughout the day, their bodies would surely retreat into convulsions and their brains would short circuit into useless mush. It must have happened on occasion, since I noticed everybody pretty much stayed indoors when the sun outside was broiling everything into one large mirage.

Native Americans were the first to settle in the desert of Palm Springs. These natives understood the simple fact that during the summer, the desert floor of what would become known as the Coachella Valley, was just too hot for comfortable living.

These people didn’t have electricity to power yet-to-be-invented air conditioners, or anything else for that matter.

But they did know one thing. If they hiked up into the higher altitudes of nearby canyons where there were cool water springs, palm trees and cooler air, summer was a pleasant experience. So that’s what they did. It made perfect sense.

Then white men came and settled the valley, and decided that, by golly, even if it was ungodly hot in the summer, why they were just going to stay and tough it out. After all, it was only for a few months, and then the weather was great the rest of the year.

These first white settlers didn’t have electricity either. But they had swamp coolers that helped humidify and theoretically cool their living areas. If these had been reasonable people in tune with nature, they would have left in the summer like the local natives did. They must have been desperate, out of money, running from the law, gluttons for punishment or all of the above to decide to stay put for the desert summer.

But then technology marched on, in came air conditioning and the year round population of the valley grew. And before long just about every indoor space in the valley was cooled with electricity-sucking air conditioning units.

After getting my job at the local newspaper, I found a small apartment near downtown Palm Springs. I’d come from living near the ocean in San Diego, so desert living was new to me.

One very hot Sunday morning in early summer I had nothing to do. It was already viciously hot outside, so hot that one colleague described it as “nuclear torque.” Other local desert heat descriptors I'd heard included Hellmouth and Parallel Hell.

So I figured I’d stroll downtown and watch a movie where the air conditioning was sure to be better than the lame little wall mounted metal box in my apartment. The thing rattled and droned as it impersonated an air conditioner and only slightly cooled the air within five feet of it.

I walked out my door and was immediately hit in the face with the merciless heat of a blast furnace. As I started to walk, I realized something. Even though the sun was high on this Sunday and it was close to noon, there were no cars driving around to speak of, and no people could be seen anywhere.

But there was an eerie duet of sound wafting in the hot, still air. It was a combination of whirring cicadas trying to cool themselves, and the hum of myriad air conditioning units on at full throttle in every apartment, store or office building in the area. The abandoned streets in full daylight of staggering heat made it seem like there had been a nuclear blast that eliminated all life. For all I knew I was the only survivor of a post apocalyptic world.

Suddenly I imagine Rod Serling walking toward me on the sidewalk, looking cool as a cucumber in the hot sun, wearing a black suit and tie, and shiny black dress shoes. His hair is black, his face oddly pale. His bushy black eyebrows furl as he speaks to me in his inimitable clipped speech. It was a narrative style all his own. Hard as Jack Webb tried, he could never master Serling’s riveting delivery when Webb starred in and narrated Dragnet, that lovable, stupid old TV cop show, in which he played the wooden Sgt. Joe Friday. I quickly refocus on Serling, who begins a mellifluous monologue:

 “You unlock this door with the key of imagination,” he says. His tone is serious, edgy. He speaks with absolute conviction. “Beyond it is another dimension,” he continues. “A dimension of sound. A dimension of sight. A dimension of mind.” Serling, it is clear, is a messenger.

“Hi Rod,” I say, waving, hoping he’s up for Raiders of the Lost Arc in the dark cool confines of the downtown movie theater.

I don’t think he hears me.

“You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance,” he says. “Of things and ideas. You just crossed over into…The Twilight Zone.”

Serling then disappears in a blink. I pick up the pace of my stride along the abandoned, sun-scorched sidewalks of Palm Canyon Drive. I finally make it to the theatre. I’m thirsty and soaked through with sweat. I find a seat in the half empty, refrigerated, popcorn-infused air of the darkened theater. My wet clothes soon turn clammy and cold as the movie starts. I’m still in…the twilight zone.

I learned a few things from living in that desert during the summer. I didn’t learn them from Rod Serling, but from trial and error. I learned that trying to sleep with poor air conditioning is an exercise in suffering. I learned it meant lying awake, uncomfortable, amid hot air that yielded sweat-dampened sheets and glistening heat at the base of my neck. I learned that electric fans could move the hot air of a room around, but they never managed to make it any cooler.

I eventually moved out of the desert and to California’s Central Valley. I bought a house there. The summers, while not offering as many mega-hot days as the desert, would typically feature about 10 days of triple-digit, stifling weather.

The house I bought was a no-frills, 1,000 square foot post-World War II stucco rectangle with a fireplace and detached garage. It had no insulation in its walls and the old double-hung windows let in plenty of air and sound from outside. Not only did this house not have any insulation, it had no air conditioning whatsoever.

So what we found out upon spending what turned out to be 12 consecutive summers in this house without air conditioning, was that on hot days, it managed to make the air inside even hotter than the air outside.

With its stucco shell, the house on hot days became an oven, or an externally heated pottery kiln, soaking in all the outside heat and efficiently radiating it inward into its rooms. Sleeping required wet dishrags on the forehead and a couple of electric fans at full blast.

Just like in the desert, we spent hot weekend days in the air conditioning of a movie theater or a mall.

If we didn’t get out of the house in the heat, we would slow cook like pork butts in a covered barbecue. Within a few hours we became motionless, knocked out. Like fully barbecued meat, a fork could be stuck in us, and it would indicate that we were done.

Eventually we improved the house with air conditioning and new windows. And when I look back at all those years without AC, I can hardly believe that at some point we weren’t found face down in the house, dead of heat stroke.

Once a friend had a backyard birthday party on one of the hottest days in memory for the area, probably around 110. I was tired of making small talk and sweating in the insufferable heat.

I saw a big tub of ice water cooling cans of beer. So I did what I needed to do. I stepped into the cold water with both bare feet and stood in the tub's icy water. And it did the trick. I may have looked idiotic standing in the tub of ice water meant for beer. But I didn’t care. I cooled off. I beat the heat, more than happy that I found a way to do it.

       It’s important to beat the heat when it’s just too hot outside. Yes, I know, air conditioning is bad for the environment, blah blah blah. But I like that it can beat the heat. And every time it’s mercilessly hot outside, and there’s somewhere to go with good air conditioning, I’m going there. Every time. Too much heat is bad for us. It dehydrates us. It keeps us from sleeping well. It scrambles our brains.

Just listen to what Rod Serling says next time you’re suffering in a heat wave and you see him. And there’s nobody around anywhere. He’ll tell you what’s going on.

Mark Eric Larson has written two books of essays, "The NERVE...of Some People's Kids," and "Don't Force it, Get a Bigger Hammer. To read, visit: 
http://www.scribd.com/Mark%20Eric%20Larson/shelf