Monsoonal Air

Makes me swoon with the sound of it. Imagine an alto sax in cahoots with a lunatic moon; a recording of Sleepy Lagoon. The air is syrup, in a soupy spoon, thick enough to climb that cratered balloon. Every year we get a dose of this undocumented air from Baja or maybe Khartoum. 

Low pressure trough, they say. It comes up like over-ripe fruit, pregnant with its bag of water. Thunderous, tripping the sky electric enough to zap a few unfortunate folks. It’s a big show not enough to quench a thirsty plant with its tongue hanging out. But enough to monsoonal me back to those nights of sweaty summers.

The smell of rain on a hotwalk is to me what that madeleine cookie was to Proust. The illegal moisture from Mexico finds asylum in my head and with it a remembrance of a distant summer. 

Whatever happened, happened to all of us. It was a communal experience. Or so it seemed to this ten-year old. The weather and the war and whooping cough, We had our heroes and our shared menace, infantile paralysis, spies and the dreaded third rail.

Then there was the Good Humor truck whose bell tolled for us. An orange popsicle would cool us down for a few minutes. On a lucky day the stick that held the ice cream might make the next one free. When the summer shower was done we would float those sticks down the river by the gutter in a race to the sewer. I went fishing once; got me a nickel from that basin.  

A few inhalations carry me east to rain-outs and subways with sticky straw seats, August nights when I leaped in my Keds for fireflies higher than a fly ball. Neighbors slept on fire-escapes in their underwear. The living was easy. Humidity and heat were tied in extra innings on our skin.

Air-cooled refrigeration was the banner outside the Austin theater. There was always a double feature plus the movie playing in our heads. Then, as now, everyone is watching a different film.  

Overhead fans didn’t do much but scatter the flies so people came out to un-stifle themselves. So did the gnats. They swarmed by gazillions all over the front window of my father’s drug store. Windows in those days were much more than glass. They were an art form labored over by a window-dresser who, with pins in his mouth, built attractive castles from empty boxes of Bromo-Selzter, hot water bottles, Band-Aids, Bisodol Mints, Doan’s Pills, Gelusil and the ubiquitous Ex-Lax package. In the mix were an apothecary jar or two to dignify the façade.

It must have been the flag colors of the Ex-Lax sign that attracted the gnats. They covered that part of the window and gradually the rest of it in sufficient numbers to excite the neighborhood. I don’t think the store ever had such traffic, at least at the outside entrance. My father possessed a natural calm which could break a fever. He needed every bit of it to persuade the crowd we were not being invaded by an alien species. Triple digit heat does strange things to people.

Whoever names hurricanes tagged this one Hilary with one el but I expect she'll get blamed for the expected deluge on Fox News and any damage she caused.