Mile 1000 - Dry Heat

The drive from Oklahoma City to Amarillo turned out to be the first real “cool stuff on the side of the road day” of our road trip.  I am a veteran of the Florida panhandle road trip on which you will see the great metal chicken, countless hot boiled peanut stands, and where you will quickly learn the meaning of the term “speed trap.”  Driving from Oklahoma into the panhandle of Texas is a bit different.  There are windmill farms, several old route 66 towns, oil wells, prairie dogs, and plains.  Seeing all of which are first experiences for me.  At mile 1,000 we pulled over and could not have picked a more fitting scene to commemorate the millennial mile.  
I also need to take a moment to put an issue that we Southerners commonly argue with Westerners to rest.  Yes, it is hot in Texas - and here comes the argument - but its a dry heat.  For 37.9 years I have always heard that argument and at times I have heard it become heated.  Now that I have experienced “dry heat” so allow me to settle the argument. 
Dryness does not diminish heat.  When Southerners say, “But its a dry heat” we are not taking anything away from 105 degrees.  Yet the mistake Westerners make is that they fail to appreciate what humidity ADDS to heat.  If it is 105 in Alabama it is really only 83.  105 in Alabama is 120.  In dry heat the air still burns, I’ll give you that.  But in humidity the air will smother you.  If you have ever seen the musical Oklahoma you know that “the wind comes sweepin’ down the plains.”  Yes it does, nonstop.  Hairspray is useless in Texas.  In humidity the air doesn’t move.  It can’t.  Its too thick.  In Alabama there is no such thing as wind.  Dry heat is warming, it is like living in an oven.  Now I will give you that dry heat means that you are being slowly baked to death, but in the South it is like living in a boiling pot of water.  In Texas you can walk around and your shirt stays dry.  In Bama there is no possibility of a dry shirt.
So I vote for dry heat.  Dry heat is warming, almost energizing.  In dry heat the body sweats and it actually evaporates off of your body, which is what it is designed by God to do.  I have never experienced the purpose of sweat until now.  God bless Texas.  Sweat works here!
On to Amarillo . . .

Comments

Popular Posts