Colorado's Great War Against Summer

I had always regarded summer as one of those institutions which mankind had accepted without sufficient examination. Winter, for example, has the decency to announce its intentions by making a man put on a coat, whereas summer comes smiling into town and begins removing his property by degrees. It took me several years to understand this, and I might never have understood it at all if Colorado had not produced a week of weather so savage that respectable citizens began conducting themselves like escaped lunatics. By Tuesday morning I had seen enough to conclude that civilization is largely a matter of temperature, and that if a thermometer could be made to rise high enough, every man would eventually become a savage, every woman a philosopher, and every politician a liar.

The trouble began with a weather report. The announcer appeared on television at six in the morning and said that we could expect “a warm and pleasant day.” He said this while standing in front of a picture of the sun, which appeared to be large enough to cover half the continent and angry enough to collect a debt. I looked outside and saw that birds had already abandoned their morning business and were sitting on telephone wires with their beaks open. My neighbor's dog was lying beneath his porch with the expression of a bankrupt banker. I turned off the television and said, “If this is pleasant, I should like to know what the gentleman considers hostile.”

By eight o'clock the town had begun to cook. The mailman delivered letters by throwing them from the truck because he had discovered that walking from one house to another required a level of courage generally associated with military service. A woman at the grocery store bought six bags of frozen peas and announced that she intended to place them around her bed. The cashier told her that peas were food. She replied that food had been promoted to a secondary purpose. I thought this was sensible and bought two bags myself, although I had no immediate plan for them beyond applying them wherever my body appeared most offended.

At nine, Mayor Pritchard made a public statement from the courthouse steps. He wore a white suit, a broad hat, and the expression of a man who had been selected to explain a shipwreck while still standing on the deck. He said the town was experiencing “an exceptional period of warmth.” A farmer in the crowd shouted, “My rooster laid an egg!” The mayor paused and said that such claims should be reported to the proper authorities. The farmer shouted back that he had reported it to the rooster, who had shown no interest in cooperating. The mayor thanked him for his contribution and continued reading his statement.

He then announced that the town possessed adequate resources to deal with the situation. At this precise moment, a telephone pole behind him gave a long creaking sound and leaned several inches toward the courthouse. Nobody moved. The mayor glanced backward, glanced forward again, and said, “As I was saying, we remain fully prepared.” The pole leaned another inch. A man beside me said, “That one looks prepared too.” I agreed with him, although I thought the pole possessed a better chance of surviving the summer than the mayor's statement.

By noon the thermometer at the feed store had reached one hundred and eight degrees. The storekeeper removed it from the wall and placed it in a bucket of water because he said the instrument had become emotionally unstable. He told me it had previously been a dependable thermometer for twenty-two years. “It went crazy today,” he said. “It started climbing past numbers it had never shown before.” I asked whether he had considered getting another thermometer. He said, “Why? So I can watch two of them suffer?”

The town council met that afternoon to discuss emergency measures. I attended because I had begun collecting evidence for a theory that the heat had caused permanent damage to public judgment. The council spent forty minutes deciding whether the word “emergency” might alarm visitors. One councilman said tourists might hear the word and cancel their trips. Another said tourists were already canceling their trips because their luggage was melting. The first councilman replied that this was precisely why we should avoid alarming them. I wrote this down because I had never before witnessed a man construct a bridge between two cliffs and then complain that somebody might fall off it.

Eventually someone suggested declaring a state of “temporary discomfort.” This phrase was approved by unanimous vote. A woman in the back stood and said her husband had been lying in the bathtub for six hours and had begun negotiating with the plumbing. The chairman thanked her for the information and said the council would consider bathtub-related matters during the next session. She shouted, “He has been in there since breakfast!” The chairman said, “Then he should have plenty of experience by now.”

That evening the town became divided into two political parties: those who believed the heat was unbearable and those who believed admitting this would make them look weak. The second group spent most of its time saying things such as, “I've experienced hotter summers,” and, “This isn't anything compared with Arizona.” One man claimed he had once worked twelve hours in a Nevada field during August. His wife, who had been silent until then, said, “You worked twenty minutes and spent the rest of the day sitting beneath a truck.” The man looked at her with the injured dignity of a statesman whose biography has been corrected in public. “That truck,” he said, “was extremely hot.”

By Wednesday morning, citizens had begun inventing methods of coping with the weather. The barber announced that he had developed a revolutionary haircut called the “Colorado Eagle,” which removed nearly all hair from the customer while leaving a small tuft on top for purposes of pride. He charged twelve dollars. When I asked why anyone would pay twelve dollars to resemble a boiled egg, he said that twelve dollars was a reasonable price for dignity. I told him dignity appeared to have become expensive. He said, “Everything is expensive during a heatwave.”

The local preacher had another solution. He announced that Sunday services would be held inside the butcher's refrigerated storage room. This proved enormously popular. Forty-seven people attended the first service, along with a minister who had clearly begun reconsidering several aspects of his profession. He preached for fifteen minutes on patience, then paused and moved closer to the refrigeration unit. “Brothers and sisters,” he said, “we are gathered here today to consider the mysterious ways of Providence.” A man beside me said, “Providence has excellent refrigeration.” I told him to keep his voice down because I feared the preacher might hear him and begin charging admission.

By Thursday the mayor announced that the town would hold a parade to demonstrate that Colorado remained “strong, cheerful, and entirely undisturbed.” This was the worst idea anybody had proposed all week, which was an impressive achievement considering that the council had already suggested temporary discomfort as a civic classification. The parade was scheduled for two o'clock in the afternoon. When I pointed out that two o'clock was usually the hottest part of the day, the mayor said that was precisely why the parade would demonstrate courage. I said, “A drowning man could demonstrate courage by swimming farther from shore, but I would prefer he demonstrate wisdom by swimming toward it.”

The parade began at two. There were twelve people in it, three horses, one brass band, and a man carrying a banner which said COLORADO FEARS NOTHING. The first horse read the banner, considered its meaning, and sat down. The second horse turned around and walked home. The third horse continued forward because it had apparently given up on life. The brass band played half a song before the musicians began removing their uniforms. One trumpet player threw his instrument into a fountain and said, “It can play itself.” Nobody contradicted him.

The mayor continued marching.

I followed because I wanted to witness the complete destruction of civic pride. We had gone three blocks when the mayor stopped beside a fire hydrant and asked whether anyone knew how to open it. A firefighter told him that doing so would flood the street. The mayor said that flooding was a temporary inconvenience. The firefighter said, “Sir, so is drowning.” The mayor stared at him for several seconds and then ordered the hydrant opened.

Water shot into the street. Twenty citizens immediately ran toward it. Children shouted with delight, dogs appeared from nowhere, three grown men removed their shirts, and the preacher climbed into the stream wearing his Sunday trousers. The mayor stood beneath the spray with both arms raised and declared that the emergency was under control. A newspaper photographer took his picture. The following morning the photograph appeared beneath the headline MAYOR LEADS COMMUNITY TO VICTORY OVER HEAT.

I had never seen victory look so wet.

Friday brought a new development. Someone discovered that the old grain elevator had a basement considerably cooler than the rest of town. Within three hours the entire population had moved into it. Families arrived carrying blankets, chairs, food, books, pets, and in one case a piano. Nobody knew why the piano had been brought down there. The owner said that he had brought it because leaving it upstairs seemed irresponsible. This was accepted as a reasonable explanation.

The mayor arrived carrying a folding chair and announced that he would remain with the people until the crisis ended. He sat down beside me and wiped his forehead. “How are you holding up?” he said. I told him I was doing well considering that I had spent five days watching adults behave like chickens in a skillet. He said, “That's resilience.” I said, “No, Mayor, that is panic with a good press agent.” He looked at me for a long moment and then said, “You should consider running for office.” I told him that I lacked the necessary qualifications.

“What qualifications?” he said.

“I have principles.”

He stood up and walked away.

That night the temperature finally dropped. The entire town emerged from the basement as though released from captivity. People stood in the street, looking upward, smiling at one another, and behaving as though they had personally defeated the sun in combat. The mayor appeared on the courthouse steps and announced that the crisis had demonstrated the strength of Colorado's citizens. The farmer with the rooster stood nearby and shouted, “My rooster still lays eggs!” The mayor ignored him.

The next morning the newspaper reported that the heatwave had been “a valuable community experience.” I went to the editor and asked whether he had actually experienced it. He said yes. I asked whether he had spent five days sweating through his clothes, hiding in a basement, buying frozen peas, watching horses resign from a parade, and listening to a preacher conduct religious services beside refrigerated beef. He said he had experienced some of those things. I told him that calling them valuable was a little like calling a train wreck educational because somebody had learned how to stop screaming.

He smiled and said, “That's a good line.”

I told him it was not a line. It was my life.

He wrote it down.

I suppose that is how history gets made in Colorado. A man suffers for a week, a mayor gives a speech, a rooster violates the laws of poultry, a preacher discovers refrigeration, and a newspaper turns the whole affair into evidence of civic virtue. By the time September comes, everyone will claim they enjoyed themselves. They will say the heat brought us together, strengthened our character, and taught us the value of community. I shall say nothing, because I have learned that there are occasions when silence is the only defense available to a man who has witnessed a mayor lead a parade into a fire hydrant.

Besides, I have kept two bags of frozen peas in my freezer.

I have also kept the mayor's parade banner.

It says COLORADO FEARS NOTHING.

I keep it because I believe every civilization ought to preserve a record of its mistakes, and because I intend to hang it over my bed next summer. When the thermometer reaches one hundred and eight again, I shall look at those words, place a bag of frozen peas upon my head, and remind myself that courage is a splendid quality in a man, provided he has the good sense to exercise it somewhere indoors.