The Heat

I remember one summer in Athens where the mercury climbed to over 100 degrees for more than 30 days straight.  Thank God for air conditioning, and cheap enough energy to run it.  I remember another hot time when I was working at the Chevrolet place in Camilla while in high school, starting when I was in the 9^th grade.  That was a lot of fun.  I was a part time bookkeeper my senior year, and also ran the parts department for a while when the parts manager had to be out to recover from a heart attack.  I’d keep a pair of coveralls hanging on the bathroom door in the parts department and, when the regular grease monkey was out, would put them on and go back into the shop to grease and change the oil and filter for customers who needed their car serviced.  I fixed flat tires – both tubed and tubeless, a skill that came in handy when I needed some truck inner tubes to float down the Flint River.  Another fun thing I did was to drive the wrecker.  We had this old, decrepit 1948 Chevrolet 2 ton truck for a wrecker.  It would barely hit 35 miles an hour running up hill.  That thing taught me some patience.  I recall specifically one summer morning, about 8 o’clock I had to tow a car from out back into a service bay.   This wrecker had the old-timey hooks where I had to crawl up under the front of the car to attach the hooks.  This particular day it was pushing 90 degrees at 8 a.m. – at least it seems so in my memory. It WAS hot as hell out there that morning and I very much resented having to work up that kind of sweat that early in the morning.  It can get mighty hot in Georgia, and it can stay hot.

American Samoa is 13 degrees south of the equator.  You’d think it gets hot here, and you’d be right.  But it doesn’t get near as hot as Georgia.  I haven’t spoken to anybody who can recall it ever having hit 100 here.  And, so far during my stay here, it hasn’t hit 90.  Granted this is the Samoan winter time, but the temperature hits in the eighties every day.  I don’t have a thermometer so I don’t know what the lowest it’s been at night, but it’s bearable.  But there is a major difference in the heat here:  air conditioning is a scarce resource.   My office is air conditioned, so are the courtrooms, as well as most businesses.  But the energy is so expensive here - I think it runs on imported coal - that the cost of air conditioning my apartment is prohibitive.  Thank God for high speed fans.

I sleep comfortably.  Being right on the ocean helps.  I keep every single window in the house open to take advantage of the breezes.  Nevertheless, it’s still hot in here if I am not directly under the fan.  I’m hot natured and I knew coming here that one of the things I was going to have to deal with is the heat.  I’m doing okay, as long as I have electricity.  Today I came home, and the first thing I did, as is my habit, was to turn on the fan.  Nothing.  Not no thing.  The lights didn’t work, either.  I had no power.  What in the world am I going to do.  How was I going to be able to deal with the heat?  How was I going to be able to write this blog entry, or, charge my cell phone?  Not only was it dark in the apartment, the outlook for anything but an unpleasant evening was dim as well.

But, I got lucky.  I went outside to see if I could see any lights on in any of the other apartments, thinking it may just be that the power was out for the entire neighborhood.  I live in a quadruplex, and the apartment below me is always dark.  The other downstairs apartment was also dark, and I don’t think anyone lives in the other upstairs apartment.  Here’s where I got lucky.  Frank, the apartment complex maintenance man, just happened to be walking by.  He could have been God only knows where, but he was right here!  We speculated as to what the problem was, and checked the meters.  None of the four was running.  I made the assumption that that meant there was no power, however, it could also have meant that none of the apartments were drawing any power.  Frank dashed my hopes when he told me he had heard the refrigerator in the other downstairs apartment kick on.  What was I to do?!?  Frank suggested I call Duffy, the fellow in charge of the housing for government employees.  I didn’t have the number but Frank did.

I called and spoke to Duffy, a nice guy who had come by the office last week to introduce himself to me.  Duffy called the power company and then called me back. It turns out that ASPA, American Samoa Power Authority, had turned off the power for non-payment of the bill.  Not on my behalf, but the previous tenant had left owing them some money.  And nobody had told me, fa’a Samoa, that I was supposed to go by and have the power put in my name.  I just thought it was included since none of the apartments are air conditioned.  Wrong.  Anyway, Duffy explained to ASPA my situation and they came out and turned the power back on.  So, here I sit, typing this note, under the fan.  Ahhhh.

In any event, it seems those here who have the most trouble with the heat are those from colder climes, like San Francisco.  And you know what Mark Twin said about that:  “The coldest winter I ever spent was one summer in San Francisco.”