And the heat goes on

I saw my friend, Minnesota Marilynn, over the weekend.

Of course, she’s now Florida Marilynn, since she and her husband moved retired to God’s Waiting Room a few years ago.

Mike and Marilynn Pantera aren’t really old enough to retire, but they put in enough years working to draw checks. So they turned the wheels of their Harleys to the south and kissed a lifetime of Minnesota winters goodbye.

The Panteras were in town visiting George and Susan Fisher. There was a big party Saturday afternoon, kind of a pre-Fourth of July celebration, out at Lake Tobesofkee. It was to welcome George back from Iraq, where he has been for the past year with the 48th. George was up all night with the neighbors, barbecuing a pig.

The official high temperature in Macon on Saturday reached 97 degrees, but it had to be 101 in the shade out there at the lake.

“I just can’t get used to this heat,’’ Marilynn told me.

I told her she should be acclimated by now. They don’t call Florida the Sunshine State for nothing.

But she said she couldn’t, and probably never will.

That’s OK. If I lived up north, I doubt I could survive the winters. I remember talking to her on the phone four years ago about a particularly brutal winter, when the wind chill in Minnesota hovered at 30-below. She would have to go out to the parking lot an hour before getting off work just to warm up her car.

So you don’t see me complaining about the heat. I know it’s going to be unmercifully hot in Macon every summer. I brace myself for the Mid Georgia Mid Year Furnace.

I once heard somebody explain if you can endure these sizzlin' summer days then you know the other nine months of the year are going to make up for it.

That's your cool thought for today.