Yeah, but it's not a dry heat.

So Weather.com is telling me that it's mid-80s and sixty-something percent humidity out there. Not horrible, but without a breath of wind, perspiration isn't going to do much in the way of evaporating. Being on the lake, and with the ground wet from a week of rain, the side porch is going to feel like a sauna. Though nowhere near as bad as yesterday; before the rain broke out, it was a 90/90 (temp/humidity) day on the porch, and let me tell you, that'll take the starch right out of you.

A couple of summers ago, my friend Byron and I were visiting Art in Terlingua, TX. It wasn't but 10 or 11 o'clock in the A.M., we were standing on the porch, and I asked Byron (who hails from parts even stickier in the summer than the Tennessee valley) how hot he thought it was.

"I don't know; it doesn't feel all that hot. If I were going by how comfortable I felt, I'd say probably high seventies, low eighties..."

I squinted at the thermometer. "Says here that it's 98 degrees. In the shade. And we got a ways to go 'til noon."

"Yeah, but it's a dry heat."

I had never appreciated what that phrase meant before, really.

On the drive back east, we made Houston the first night. Opening the truck door and walking across the parking lot on the way into a Waffle House with its windows fogged with condensation reintroduced me to the summer sauna of the South. I've thought about that day on the porch in the Texas desert every summer day since then.