While I was stationed at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, my youngest brother, Dave got married. His wedding was scheduled for the weekend after the Fourth of July in my hometown in North Dakota. My wife didn’t want to go, so I planned to fly up just for the wedding and fly back. My parents wanted all of my brothers and I that were in the military to wear our Army uniforms at the wedding and for the family photos. I carried my class A uniform on a hanger and took a few pairs of cutoffs and polo shirts in an overnight bag. When I left Tucson, the temperature was 105 degrees at 9 o’clock in the morning. It was a typical day in the desert. When I got to Phoenix to the airport, the temperature was 115 degrees. But that was expected. The swath of desert from Phoenix to Gila Bend down to Yuma was the hottest stretch of desert in Arizona. And let me tell you something. It got mighty damn hot throughout that swath all the damn time. You could sweat your ass off just thinking about the heat. Phoenix was one of the few places that I’ve ever been where you could even sweat in the shower. You could never tell you were sweating when you first started living in Arizona. But do you know how you knew you were sweating? You’d get these white stains all over your clothes when the sweat dried. The key to keeping cool was to wear as little as possible. Keep that in mind because that’ll be very important. I got on my flight and flew from Phoenix to Minneapolis, and then from Minneapolis to Fargo, North Dakota. My brother Jed was supposed to pick me up at the airport in Fargo. That was the plan. When I got to Fargo, the airport was empty. When I say the airport was empty, I mean the airport was empty. I could not even find a fly flying around in that damn building. Not one damn fly. And there were no humans anywhere to be found. Why am I telling you all of this? Just for the hell of it, of course. I’m telling you all of this because it was 46 degrees and raining when I got to Fargo. 46 damn degrees! When I left Arizona, not Phoenix, but home, it was 105. The temperature was less than half of what it was when I left home earlier that day. Remember what I said earlier about the key to staying cool? I said the key was to wear as little as possible. Well, I was paying for that shit now. I was freezing my goddamn ass. Literally. I started doing jumping jacks in the airport to try to warm up. I would have looked like a complete jackass if there was anybody there to watch me. The problem was, there was nobody there to watch me. After about 20 minutes, a guy in a green blazer came walking through the airport. There was some kind of patch on that blazer and he looked kind of important, so I walked over to intercept him. I read the patch on his jacket, which read airport authority and I asked, “Are you in charge of this airport?” He looked at me kind of funny and asked, “Are you talking to me?” “Well, is there anybody else around? I don’t think so. So, yeah. I guess I am talking to you. Are you in charge of this airport?” “Well, I’m the manager on duty, I guess.” “Do you have a heater?” “A heater?!?” “Yeah. You know. A heater. It’s a little square thing that heats up a room or a building. A heater. Do you have one?” “A heater?” “What we have here is failure to communicate. I am speaking English, right?” “Yes. Yes, you’re speaking English.” “Thank goodness. For a minute there, I thought I was speaking some strange new language or something. Oh wait. I was. You don’t know what a heater is. You don’t call them heaters. You call them furnaces. Do you have a furnace?” “Well, of course, we have a furnace. It gets cold here in the winter.” “Let me tell you something, pal. Where I come from this is winter. When I left Arizona this morning, it was 105. When I got here, the temperature was 46 degrees, and it was raining. To me, that is winter.” “Don’t you have any warm clothes?” “No. Did you listen to anything I said? I came from Arizona. The average temperature there is 100 degrees every day. What I have on are warm clothes in hundred-degree weather.” “Well, I can see that you are pretty cold, judging by the goosebumps all over your body. Come with me.” The airport manager took me into an office where he had a space heater. He turned on the space heater and allowed me to warm up. Then he asked me about my transportation arrangements. I explained to him that my brother was supposed to come and pick me up, but that he was running late. About a half hour later, my brother Jed finally showed up to pick me up. While I had waited for him, I sat around thinking about my summertime winter and realized that I was on another freezing exercise in futility.
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