The Chili Effect

Habenero chili. Yep, that is a hot food. Makes your mouth burn, any part of your skin that it touches feel like a red hot poker of burning metal trying to cook its way through. That is the foundational history of the chili. It is also the history of an Arizona summer.

You know, it’s hotter here now than when it was when my grandfather use to swing from a rope hanging from one of the cottonwoods that lined the canals near his parents dairy, which, by the way, is now runway 8 left for Sky Harbor International. Arizona summers require planning. We move from winter to summer in about 72 hours. There is no gosh, wasn't this whole month wonderful-type talk. These summers require us to think about such things as air conditioning servicing, pool maintenance, swamp coolers, cooking outside or just eating salads, chaffing, and the new ones for the new-agers—tanning booths.

“Mark, whoa, slow down there. Tanning booths? Where did you come up with that? You won’t find any self-respecting man who has a XY chrome-pattern to even think about going to a tanning booth. Besides, it’s Arizona, just go outside, take your shirt off and cut the lawn, or change that bearing adapter on your swamp cooler along with the pump. That old deer gut will be red in 12 to 19 minutes according to the woman with the troweled on makeup doing the weather on the six-o’clock news. She should know, she just transferred down here from Minnesota and she fell asleep laying next to her condo's pool and her back is the color of a fire truck.”

Okay, look, I’m not some wing-nut from a French baking school. This is serious prepping for one of the harshest climates the Big Ten Cities have. Now, granted, I would much rather have Phoenix summers than a Buffalo winter. Shoveling FEET of snow off my driveway just to be stuck in the street every day is not my idea of good times, but every year that same weather gal, having believed what her colleagues have told her, tries to fry an egg on the sidewalk outside her studio. Of course it eventually works, after hours on the pavement and the flies reduce it to a small pool of goo, but she tried and was marginally successful. We need a plan. I’m just spit-balling here.

Here is the idea, if you go to a tanning place (do we really need to call them a salon?) and capitalize on their specials, like a week free or coupons and discounted stuff, get a little controlled UV roasting, then when we do go outside and mow the lawn, trim the hedge, or replace that flange adapter on the #2 control rod of the cooler’s squirrel cage, we shouldn't wind up in the burn unit at County General. Arizonans have some of the worst tans on the planet. ALL the health experts say you shouldn't have a tan; its bad for you, it will give you some cancer they have to remove the old fashion way—with a knife and Bondo.

Some of us might want to travel this summer to someplace with an ocean like Florida, San Diego, or the Caribbean. You don’t want to walk out on the beach with a tanned head and neck, forearms, and the rest of your body so white it’s translucent. After one day, you find yourself in a burn unit on an island where the doctor is in a tank top of woven Hyena skins and treating you by waving some chicken bones (you hope they are chicken bones) over your head, while humming some chant through an Ibex horn, and throwing some crushed coconut ash on your second degree wounds. The idea of strapping yourself up with a zip line harness that afternoon is the last thing you want to think about.

Look, we need to live wiser out here in the great southwest. Sir Lawrence adapted when he came from pasty-white England to the Middle-East. He wore a man dress and head cover. HOw he looked was not as important as staying alive. He drank water and stayed out of the sun. With the flat screen and Blue-Ray, that last part should be easy. But we are creatures who like the outdoors. We are creatures who fix stuff. If we are going to harvest the lawn and do so in our Speedo and flip-flops, we need to take precautions against things, like someone doing a drive-by harpooning of a Great White.

NEXT TIME: Sun block v. Baby oil-sauteed or fried.