Hugh Neeld: The Curmudgeon Report

I’ve lived in Texas all my life and have seen my share of hot weather. Many of my years were spent in West Texas, where you can fry an egg on a sidewalk in July and August, then I moved to East Texas, thinking at first that it would be deliverance from that kind of heat. Of course what I didn’t realize at the time was how high humidity could make East Texas more uncomfortable at 95 degrees than West Texas at 105.

Well, I got an e-mail from my brother the other day that really brought Texas summer weather into focus. He attached an old newspaper story he’d uncovered about the day the mercury hit 120 degrees in the little town of Seymour, where I had briefly lived in the early 1950s.

It’s always hotter on the plains west of Wichita Falls. But on August 12, 1936, it was hotter in Seymour than it has ever been anywhere else in Texas.

Back then there was no Weather Channel. Insurance agent Lloyd Jones, with whom I was acquainted, recalled in a 1972 interview with United Press International that nobody knew it was 120.

“People just walked around fanning themselves,” he said, “and asking, isn’t it hot?”

In a 1993 interview in the local paper, Jones’ son, Jack, talked about that day. He was just a little boy at that time riding his bicycle to town. At 8:30 a.m., he stopped at a service station to check his tires. He saw a thermometer in the shade under the canopy at the front door. It read 96 degrees.

“That was a good running start for the day,” Jack said. “Remember, there was no air conditioning at this time except for an evaporative cooler at the Texas Theater. Anyone who could took off for the mountains.”

The nearest cool spot is Ruidoso, N.M. Another Seymour resident, Foster Bunkley, had taken his family there a couple of weeks before that August day for a respite from the heat. They came home too soon.

“I know we nearly burned up after we hit Amarillo,” Bunkley said. “Most cars weren’t air conditioned. We stopped in nearly every little town we came to trying to cool off.”

The week was the hottest across the state. More than 10 people died in North Texas. In Dallas, 40,000 people packed the Texas Centennial, a festival celebrating the state’s 100th year. The air-conditioned building in Fair Park was the day’s biggest attraction. The crowds came even though the thermometer the previous day had hit 112 degrees.

In Seymour, that’s a cool snap.

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A question to ponder:

If global warming is for real, why hasn’t it had an effect on my wife’s feet?

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Hugh Neeld is a freelance columnist for TylerPaper.com.

Hugh Neeld is a freelance columnist for TylerPaper.com.
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