meek little wives feel
edge of the carving knife and
study husbands’ necks
There was a desert wind blowing that night.
It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch.
On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight.
Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks.
Anything can happen.
So starts the short novel or long short story, “Red Wind” in the collection of short novels or long short stories, Trouble is My Business, by Raymond Chandler, (Houghton Mifflin, 1950).
How Mr. Chandler took some very simple words and connected them in such a way that lets you feel the heat and dust and see the scene in your mind, the scene with the meek little wife and the knife and the husbands neck, and you can see it as clearly as if it were a scene in a Spielberg movie is beyond me.
A neat trick.
If I knew how Mr. Chandler did that (IE – It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window …) I would do it.
Somehow, deep in my soul, I am sure and reassured that AI or CHATgtp or any computer could NOT write that sentence is just that way.
It has been hot here in the Low Country of South Carolina.
It is the Low Country because it is so low above sea level.
A couple of miles from the Atlantic Coast and, according to my smart phone, 27 feet above sea level, where I am writing from the 3rd floor of our apartment building.
And it has been hot here in the Low Country of South Carolina.
We are in the whatever day of a prolonged heat advisory.
My wife and I both enjoy the climate here, for the most part.
We don’t miss snow.
We don’t miss extended cold weather.
I claim that I lived a half of a century in West Michigan and my bones have yet to thaw out.
And it has been hot here in the Low Country of South Carolina.
Just off the coast, it has not been the dry hot of the Santa Anna Wind Mr. Chandler refers to.
Humidity is also off the charts.
I am not sure what that means as humidity is one of those things that cannot be greater than 100%.
100% humidity means rain.
So humidity here hovers around 97%.
The temperature today will peak around 97 degrees.
The same smart phone that tells me the elevation above sea level also says that the temp with the humidity, will feel like 110 degrees.
I am used to windchill.
Reports that with a temperature of 28 degrees and a 15mph wind, it will feel like 8 degrees outside.
Going the other way is new to me.
Cold air, below freezing is crisp and clear.
Hot air, in the 90’s with humidity in the 90’s is thick and visible.
Cold air is a slap in the face.
Hot, humid air, is a big dog that sits on your chest and slowly squeezes the oxygen out of your blood.
Coming inside from cold air, heat embraces you, wraps you up, comforts you.
Coming inside from hot, humid air, the air conditioning attacks you, assaults your senses and leaves you senseless.
And when you come inside, down in here in the low country, during a prolonged head advisory, it is like walking into a meat locker.
You can feel the fingers of cold wrap around your skin.
You remember the scene in the movie, “The Day After” where the helicopter pilot opens the door and the freeze line moves across his face.
They say life in the south would not be possible without air conditioning.
But life at what cost?
Garrison Keillor once wrote something along the line that the seeds of decay of the Western World were in Air Conditioning.
My Dad was one of those people who thought Air Conditioning saved the Western World.
My Dad always held that in a car, the comfort of the driver was supreme therefore the driver (on trips that meant my Dad) set the level of air conditioning.
For my Dad, that meant full blast.
As cold as it get which was determined how long it was on. at full blast.
On long summer trips in a station wagon filled with suitcases and kids, the middle seat was my Mom’s domain and it seems like my sisters also had dibs on the middle row.
For us boys that meant that back of the station wagon which in those days was a flat cargo area.
We would put some cushions back there and some pillows but for the most part you sat cross legged and tried to get comfortable.
Or it was the front seat.
The front seat with Dad.
The front seat with the air conditioning blowing out 34 degrees of cold air at 50mph.
5 minutes you got cold.
10 minutes you were frozen.
15 minutes you were in agony AND you had to use the bathroom so bad you thought you might explode any second.
I remember one family trip through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan when I was around 11 years and I was near tears, I was frozen, my feet were blocks of ice, I couldn’t feel my fingers and I had to go so bad.
My Dad spotted a gas station and pulled in.
There was a RESTROOM sign with an arrow pointing around the side of the building and I was out of the car before it came to stop.
Running as fast I could, I came wide around the corner and saw the two doors for restrooms and I shoved a door open and took care of things.
I sat in there, with the crisis retreating as I warmed up and relief spread through my body in many ways.
As I came back to the conscious world I became aware of my brothers voices.
It came to me that they were in the restroom.
The restroom next door.
I heard one of my brothers say, ‘I wonder where Mike is?’
I noticed the restroom I was in was all done in pink.
Air conditioning curls your hair and makes your nerves jump and your skin itch.
On frozen nights like that every booze party ends in a fight.
Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks.
Anything can happen.
