I love the way the sun hits the earth during this season. It’s hypnotic. I am listening to Johnny Cash and June Carter sing “I’ll Fly Away.” And I can’t seem to find anything to write about because I am too distracted.
I’m looking out my office-trailer window at the sun hitting my ugly dirt lot, and singing along with music about flying away.
This plot of land wasn’t always bare dirt. It used to be forest. But the man who owned it before me cut down all the pine trees because he was as crazy as an outhouse fly.
When I asked the man why he did this, he told me, “I just really hate trees.”
What kind of a depraved human—not counting real estate developers and New York Yankees fans—hates trees?
So mainly I just park all my junk on this ugly lot. Old boats, my truck, and I have a few dilapidated recreational vehicles. An old Airstream trailer (1969). And one Yellowstone camper (1956) which I gutted, renovated, and made into my office.
That’s where I am right now.
This morning I’ve tried to write but I keep losing focus because of the way the sun is shining. And this music. I’m a sucker for old-time hymns.
It’s also brisk outside and I have the doors to my office slung open. Something I rarely do because it’s usually hotter than twelve hells where we live.
This summer we had temperatures upwards of 127 degrees. That is not an exaggeration. I would check the weather on the internet, and the “feels like” temperature would read 127 degrees.
When I was a kid, we didn’t have feels-like temperatures. We only had thermometers and old men who talked about the weather by cracking jokes. I love it when old men cuss the weather.
“It’s so hot,” one man might say, “I saw a funeral procession pull over at Dairy Queen.”
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