The heat, though seasonal enough, has been a problem. For eighteen years when we lived completely off-grid here in Central Texas, the heat was personified or anthropomorphized as the enemy. A friend-enemy. Sent to make us miserable and stronger. We knew we had to face him every year, and we accepted him as a three-month mind siege necessary to make us tougher and more survivable than our generation. That is all to say that we learned how to take him, to face him. The years when the hundred-degree heat hit in early May and stayed on through September… were the tough years. The years like this one when it didn’t even really get hot until well into June, or like in 2007 when we got forty-plus inches of rain and it never really went over a hundred degrees all year, those were the great years. But we got tougher either way.

Living downtown in a small apartment in the air conditioning is a mixed bag. I sit out in my alley a few times a day just to remember the heat and the sun has baked all the brick and stone and concrete and it radiates like a pizza oven. You can feel it when you walk downtown. At the land, we could step down into the trees down by the creek and it was cooler and the breezes sometimes would stir the leaves on the trees and we sweated properly back then and ate right so our bodies cooled in the breezes. We would sit in the shade behind the cabin and wait for the sun to go down and for the temperatures to drop. When it was very hot, I would take a bucket of water from the cistern – the water felt icy cold at 55 degrees when it was 105 outside – and Danielle would pour it over my head held over a planter of Rosemary so that the water wouldn’t be wasted.

When it was crazy hot and the children were younger we’d all pile in the truck and drive to Santana Lake or Sealy Lake by the backroads a mile or so away and we’d take a bar of soap. The water wasn’t really cold, but it was cool and we’d stay in it until we felt better.

At night when it only dipped down into the mid-80s and there was no breeze, I’d take cans of beer out of the cistern, or out of the ice box when we had ice, and as I lay in bed I’d put the can of beer on my chest and cross my wrists over it, letting the chill from the can cool my blood. I’d move the can to behind my neck, then behind each knee. Anywhere the veins were closest to the surface on the skin. When the can got warm I’d swap for another cool one and do it all again. Danielle would dip her shirt into the cistern or the ice water when we had it and pull it on and sleep like that. She’s probably smarter than me, but I couldn’t sleep in a wet shirt.

This past Monday we braced ourselves and stepped outside into the heat. The birds that usually sit on the wires were gone – too smart to be out in it. We cut through the park and then stayed in the shade as we walked down Center Avenue the heat radiating up from the road, then we cut across Center to 10 Mile. I ordered an icy glass of Bock made in Dublin, Texas, and Danielle ordered a cold pint of Blonde Ale but I don’t know where it was made.

A nice lady in there said “hi” and said that she liked my writing and that she read my columns. “You’re the one,” I joked. It’s hard to be a writer in a day when no one reads, but it does feel good when you meet a reader who is willing to admit it. Inside, drinking the cold beer, I watched the cars go by and the drivers, swaddled in the 72-degree perpetual womb of the modern industrial culture, and I wondered what it will be like if it all goes down and stays down. What will it be like for me? Will I re-embrace my old friend/enemy?

Everybody talks about the heat, but they don’t know it like we do. They’ve worked out in it, but never lived in it 24/7 for so long that it became like a person. Yeah… you say you do roofing and it’s 125 degrees all day or that you worked in the oilfield and whatnot, but let’s face it, the air conditioner worked in the truck and then you went home and took a shower and the A/C worked just fine all night. We planned our lives for the living contradiction of facing it and avoiding it, 24 hours a day, every day, for months, years, endless summer months, moments ticking by, our friend/enemy with us – no end.

Now, after a year in the air-conditioner, I have mixed feelings about spending all day avoiding an old friend/enemy. Right now, it’s nice inside but here in a minute after I press “SEND” on this column, I’ll step out into the alley and meet my old friend again.

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Michael Bunker is a local columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose columns appear periodically on the website.