The Florida melt is not a sandwich. It doesn’t involve hamburger patties on Wonderbread with some unusual sauce that blends ketchup, beach sand and a mystery substance found in the fridge that turned a color no one has ever seen before.
Rather, Florida melt is that time of year when spring finally fades, taking with it that sweet, candy smell of jasmine and the cool breezes that whisk across you like a silk kerchief.
Spring fades, and quicker than you can say “scorched buttocks,” Florida’s molten lava summer kicks in. Socks melt to your feet and the jasmine catches fire.
Florida melt is when climbing inside a pizza oven will give you more relief than standing on the street. It’s when the mosquitoes head up north in search of cooler skies, and you start making grilled cheese sandwiches al fresco on the asphalt in front of your house.
During Florida melt, the heat pours down out of the sky, enveloping every part of your body. Your sweat glands get tested to the point that you need transplants.
We’ve been lucky so far this year. Here it is the first day of June, and we’re still enjoying glorious weather – those refreshing onshore winds and that early morning nip that has just about made us forget that 100 degrees in the shade is not just a saying.
But don’t fool yourself — Florida melt is coming. I could sense it this past weekend as I was working in the yard. The sun’s rays weighed heavier, and seemed to pierce just a little deeper. The mid-day heat crowded out the air, and I experienced the most telltale sign of all: I started talking to my tools. I always know when the summer heat is just about here when I start chatting up the guys in the shed.
If it’s light, playful banter, we have a good month or two to go. If I start cocking a brow and asking rhetorical questions — like why a hammer punched a hole in the siding — we’re just a few days away. But when I start threatening power saws with physical violence and calling their mothers cross-eyed, bow-legged weed whackers, you know it’s upon us.
If you ever hear a man scream out, “Cut straight or I will murder you and your whole family!” — then go out and stock up on sun tan lotion and iced tea.
But I’m ready for it, honestly. I’m third generation from Tampa where heat is measured in the number of seconds it takes you to start hallucinating. Thanks to the stagnant air of the Gulf and the high humidity that hangs in the air like a wet rag, Tampa summers are unbearable.
Worse still was growing up in a house that to this day doesn’t have air conditioning. My mother is convinced that an energy crisis will force the extinction of AC, so she refuses to give in and flood her house with cool air.
My wife worries that the heat is making her shrink.
But Tampa trained me well to suffer the Florida melt, and I’m getting excited about summer proper. With my little girl, I’m ready for ice pops melting down my arm and playing in the garden hose. I’m ready for ice cream and cookouts when standing by the grill knocks the temperature just above the manageable threshold. Nothing like blacking out and nearly face-planting in the coals.
I’m ready for days at the beach when, no matter how much water you drink or sun tan lotion you use, you’re pretty much assured you’ll look like a slice of bacon when you’re all through.
And I’m ready to tackle those summer tasks I promised myself I’d do during the winter, like climbing atop my hot tin roof or rooting around in the smoldering attic.
So bring it on Florida melt — I’m ready for you.