Simmer, sizzle and sweat, it’s summer time in Saint Louis and it is a hot one this year. The highs were 108 °F yesterday and 107 °F today. The cleaning lady at work suggested that I try frying an egg in the street. She had seen it done on the news. I considered doing it. It would have made a great picture, but it is too darn hot. This has probably been the hottest summer that I’ve ever experienced here in the Lou. Hotter even than my first summer here, 1980. That summer was a good warning about Saint Louis summer weather. Every summer since then we’ve been reminded of that first hot summer. This summer’s reminder is especially vehement though. Well, enough whining about the weather. Tomorrow will be cooler and it just might rain, for the first time in a month.
People who really want to have a good time won’t come to a slaughterhouse. And we’ve got entirely too many troublemakers here. Too many 40-year-old adolescents, felons, power drinkers and trustees of modern chemistry. – Dalton, “Roadhouse”
I had my own Aurora, CO moment some 23 years ago. It was a week night. I can remember that much. Anyway, it was May of 1989. I left at home Anne with our two small sons, four and two. I drove the half-mile to the Esquire Theater to see “Roadhouse”, starring Patrick Swayze.
All you have to do is follow three simple rules. One, never underestimate your opponent. Expect the unexpected. Two, take it outside. Never start anything inside […] unless it’s absolutely necessary. And three, be nice. – Dalton, “Roadhouse”
In this movie Swayze plays the pro-bouncer Dalton. He’s been called into this small Kansas town to clean up a bar, the roadhouse. Arrayed against him is Ben Gazzara, the evil crime boss and his minions. The interspersed dialog is Dalton’s introductory speech to the roadhouse’s staff.
If somebody gets in your face and calls you a c***sucker, I want you to be nice. Ask him to walk. Be nice. If he won’t walk, walk him. But be nice. If you can’t walk him, one of the others will help you, and you’ll both be nice. I want you to remember that it’s a job. It’s nothing personal. – Dalton, “Roadhouse”
This was your typical action flick, with the exception that most of the fighting was hand-to-hand, there was little if any gun play. That’s not to say that people weren’t killed, more than a few were. By the end of the movie the bad guys had been vanquished, the roadhouse was presentable and Dalton had the girl. Was there anything else? Oh yeah, the credits.
I want you to be nice until it’s time to not be nice. – Dalton, “Roadhouse”
I don’t know why I stayed for the credit, I seldom do, ask Joanie. This time I did though. I stayed until the trademarks and exited the now empty theater. I exited to a parking lot filled with police and their flashing lights. There had been a gunfight. Gang, domestic or what, I never did learn. There were no wounded or bodies left at the scene. I made my way to my car and observed a bullet hole in the trunk of the car parked next to mine. I drove home and by relating this story to my wife put the fear of the Lord into her. I scanned the paper for days, but never found any mention of this incident. How nice. Shortly after this incident the Esquire began to hire off-duty policemen as armed guards for their theater.
I’m back in the Lou again and I’m back at work too. Yesterday, I braved another marathon rocket shot and drove all the way back home from the cabin in just one day. 750 miles makes for a long day; especially when you are doing all of the driving by yourself.
It is still hot here. How hot is it? It is triple-digit hot, 106 °F to be specific. It is so hot and dry that I predict that it is going to take a hurricane to break this summer’s heat spell and drought. It will actually only be the remnant of a hurricane by the time that this first named storm hits Saint Louis, but it will dump a bunch of rain and breakup the prevailing weather patterns that have us locked in their grip this summer. Unfortunately for Saint Louis the hurricane season is still too many weeks away.
The photo with this post is another one of my night photographs from last week at the cabin. I had high hopes for some spectacular night shots, but this one and a few more are the only ones that are even presentable. I had hoped to capture the Aurora borealis and one night last week there was a large flare solar event that promised an excellent opportunity to observe and photograph the northern lights. I checked the websites that do Aurora borealis forecasts and I was well within the observable region, but unfortunately the weather forecast was not onboard, cloud cover spoiled that one and only chance.
Another photo-op missed was something called the Iridium flash or Iridium flare. The Iridium satellite constellation is composed of many low earth orbit communications satellites. The Iridium satellites are what make satellite telephones work. You know the kind of mobile phones that news reporters use when they are in a remote location, like Afghanistan? The Iridium satellites have several key features that make observing and photographing them interesting. First, they have a single large solar cell panel. When this panel is properly aligned, it causes a bright reflect flash of sunlight. It can be as bright as the full moon, bright enough to be seen in daytime. Now this flash is narrowly focused, so it can’t be seen over a wide area, just tens of kilometers. There are many Iridium satellites and they travel in a low earth orbit, so these events are reasonably frequent. My problem here was a combination of my unwillingness to stay-up all night and some faulty forecasting. So, I never got to see any of these flash events.
Finally some of my problems were of my own making. I learned today that I didn’t have all of the settings on my camera set properly. Now I have corrected these mistakes, so that next time I might be able to generate better pictures. Practice always makes perfect. Isn’t that what they say?
