Not getting much sympathy, are ya, SFLG!
It was Davy Crockett, who was supposed to have said, "You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas!" I have lived a lot of places, but I am a born and raised Texan, and I am absolutely sure that Ol' Davey really meant to say, "You may all stay in Tennessee, and I will go to varying degrees of Hell in Texas, at least in the Summertime!"
Don't get me wrong, I like Texas, but in the Summertime, I seek out air conditioning, close the drapes and crank up the AC!
I grew up in West Texas and it was hot enough, but at least I had a swamp cooler running 24/7 over the foot of my bed. Out there, in West Texas, if you had a swamp cooler, you could at least pretend to get a little cooler. I came to Austin for the first time the summer of 1966 for a week long political convocation for high school boys called Boy's State, one week before Charles Whitman's tower shooting. There were 750 of us standing in formation in front of the Tower as the flag was raised in the morning and lowered in the evening all week long - of course, that is another story, but I am sure glad that that convocation was not scheduled for the following week. We stayed in un-air conditioned dorms at UT and I was first introduced to the concept that you could take a shower, and no matter how many towels you had, you could not dry off. I think it is a rule hereabouts.
I was not very well traveled in those days, but I later learned that there is an invisible line running from the Red River somewheres a little north west of Ft Worth that runs down through Austin to San Antonio and down to Laredo, to the east of which has always resided the Turrible Humidities. To this day I am not sure how anybody that lives, especially further south in the Turrible Humidities, ever got anything done in the summers, or even slept for that matter, before the wondrous invention of refrigerated air conditioning. It surely must be that a certain foreknowledge of the Turrible Humidities must have possessed Ol' Davey and caused him to make that statement the way he did, and in his delerium of the moment, being possessed and all, caused him to say it all backwards!
As I said, I sure like Texas and all, but aside from having to learn to deal with the Turrible Humidities, I must say that you will certainly come to appreciate our wonderful winters, that seem to come in spurts of several days of freezed-arsed cold weather interspersed with with several days of weather that encourage the wearing of shorts and t-shirts. Now that is a winter for you! Just enough cold to remind you that it is indeed winter and enough warm to cause you to exclaim like my wife's dear departed ancestors just might have uttered under the same circumstances, "What a Mechaya!
That certainly does beat Northern Maine, where you have nine months of solid freezed arse weather to the nth degree of infinity, followed by one week of Mud Season, known as Spring in other parts of the country, followed by maybe ten weeks of Summer if you are lucky ... you know the drill! Wash, rinse, freeze, repeat!
So, welcome to Texas. and if you visit much in Houston, be prepared for the water bugs as big as you hand that like to fly around in the middle of the night, and of course, that is another story!
