Warped by the Heat

I didn’t know my Grandpa Bonn all that well. The times we were together were precious few, though in the last years of his life I had the blessed opportunity to visit with him and even learn a little bit.

Grandpa Bonn was a colourful guy. He could describe things in ways that made you smile and, occasionally, made you cringe. It was part of his character. So in hanging out with him I learned some turns of phrase that really get the mind working. One of these—my favourite, I think—he used to describe both a notable habañero pepper and the cylinders of a motorcycle after he’d “seen what it could do.” That phrase is, and I quote:

Hotter than the hinges of hell.

Interestingly, that phrase also describes Phoenix, Arizona in August.

Most materials have certain quantifiable properties. Copper, when powdered and set to a flame, burns bright green. Plastic of types 1, 2, and 4, when cut into small pieces and heated over a gas stove (don’t ask) shrinks, curls up, and emits noxious fumes. Most things undergo radical changes when exposed to heat. And I think the human mind is no different.

An example is in order.

The last two days here in Phoenix have been hotter than the hinges of hell. You step outside the door and choke on the air. If you could grow tobacco in Phoenix, we’d be living in a giant cigarette. (Don’t give me any of that “But it’s dry heat!” stuff. Ovens are dry, and if you climbed into one of those when it was turned on you wouldn’t fare much better.) You can feel the wind like a river of molten air hit your face when you cross the soft asphalt streets. You can hear on the breeze the cackling chatter of the devil’s minions going about their daily chores. Phoenix is hotter than the hinges of hell, and we’re in it.

When the going gets hot, the hot go to In’N’Out for a burger. At least those who have been out of country and therefore deprived of their In’N’Out fix for too long do so. And the milkshakes are a blessing of cold in the heat. So we plodded our way through the thickening melt of the city to the classic burger joint of the southwest US.

We’re sitting in In’N’Out, savouring the sweet sensation of a cheeseburger and fresh-cut, fresh-fried chips—I mean, fries—when an employee of the establishment walks over to a regular customer sitting near us. She leans over the familiar client and says:

“Nice and cool today, isn’t it?”

I stop chewing. I look over. I think perhaps I’ve slipped out of reality and into some alternate universe where black is white and white is black. It could happen; there’s something sinister about this kind of heat, as if perhaps a worm hole is sneaking up behind you, breathing down your neck with the heat of a thousand suns.

It must be a joke. It’s like those cruel people who think it’s funny, when 100-degree heat and 95% humidity hits the East Coast, to greet you by saying, “Hot enough for ya?” This is just sick Arizona humour, like the sick humour of any other place in the world, only hotter.

But the familiar customer turns to the employee and says:

“It is! A very nice day out.”

The world is slipping through my fingers like the grilled onions that are slipping out of my open jaw. I thought for a moment; no, no I hadn’t misheard. One lady just said it was nice and cool; the other just agreed and called it a nice day. It wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t even sarcasm thickly veiled behind a dark shroud of dry humour. These two were serious. And disturbingly cheery.

Heat must warp the mind. It’s the only explanation I could come up with. Their minds—perhaps even their skin and the lobes of the brain in control of heat sensation—had been twisted by the heat. They’d been in Arizona too long.

It’s time to get out of this place, before I start climbing in the oven to cool off.

~emrys