Hotter than blue blazes? Maybe a Big Jim hot?

Tuesday marked the 79th anniversary of the atomic bomb test over at White Sands, so to mark the event I decided to get around to watching the three-hour Oppenheimer movie. They say the heat from the explosion was hotter than blue blazes; hotter even than a pepper sprout. Hot enough even to turn a black cat in Bingham white on one side. The movie sure does look good, but it gave the Trinity Site test only a few scenes sandwiched in between his issues with women and national security.

But anyway, I was kind of disappointed that the movie didn’t include more at White Sands, like the hustle and bustle at the McDonald ranch house, or maybe even Oppenheimer having lunch with Gen. Groves at the Owl in San Antonio, however remote that possibility might’ve been.

But movies always take liberties, don’t they? Like the Clint Eastwood movie that depicted what was purported to be a border crossing into Mexico. Wait, isn’t that the EMRTC guard shack?

Frankly, I was more impressed with the 1952 home movie clip of Oppie walking around the plaza taken by Gary Jaramillo’s Uncle Joe.

Although it’s not as hot outside as blue blazes or maybe even one of Mario Rosales’ Big Jim hots, if you’re going out and about, whether on vacation or just a jaunt around the greater Socorro metropolitan area, don’t forget to take water with you.

With the thermometer stuck in the mid-90s, here’s a batch of “it’s so hot” one-liners:

• The Statue of Liberty was asked to lower her arm.

• My seat belt makes a pretty good branding iron.

• All my pants are “sweat” pants.

• Fireworks were lighting themselves.

And then, “If it gets any hotter, I’ll have to take off stuff I really ought to keep on.”

Speaking of that, if you’re one of those so-called sun worshippers, your day in the sun was last Sunday, National Nude Day.

Not to seem too naïve, but I’m wondering how people celebrated National Nude Day. Although I try to be an open-minded kind of guy, it sounds kind of icky, and I don’t know if there are any nudists in Socorro but there are a couple of things that first come to mind. For one, you’d spend a fortune on sunblock, and two, you’d have to be extra careful around cholla and goatheads.

As far as I could tell there was no one prancing around Socorro in their birthday suit, but then again if there were, they’d more than likely be observing the day parading behind closed curtains. Or at the nearest nudist camp, if there is such a thing here.

The only times I remember ever being naked in public were in those dreams when I’m somewhere and suddenly realize my pants have disappeared and I’ve got to get from place A to place B. And then, somewhere along the line, my pants reappeared. Am I alone on this?

Wait. I know what you’re thinking, but this is not some Freudian thing like the fear of losing my pants, what psychiatrists call gymnophobia. I know this because it’s in the book The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud. The two things I remember after reading it are that places are often treated as persons and that dreams are never concerned with trivial matters.

After that, you’re on your own.

We’ve all had totally weirded-out dreams at one time or another and sometimes you just can’t help from trying to describe it to someone…like, “I was at the newspaper office but it was really a radio station, and suddenly I was driving somewhere but I was really riding on an elephant, and I was talking with my brother, and my brother turned into a cat that was white on one side and black on the other, and… and…” By that time you start sounding like Dorothy telling Auntie Em and Uncle Henry about munchkins, flying monkeys, and a scarecrow who did a song and dance.

But I digress.

Regardless of climate change or global warming, Socorro’s summer weather remains true to form. Just hunker down and make sure you’ve remembered to clean the filter on that swamp cooler.

On a particularly warm day last week, I was watching some kids jumping through lawn sprinklers at the park and I thought of the song by Bill and Bonnie Hearne called New Mexico Rain. Bill and Bonnie were the house band at the Alpine Lodge up in Red River for many years.

At any rate, watching those summer vacation kids jumping through the sprinklers, a phrase from that song popped into my head:

One thing’s for sure, there just ain’t no cure like a waltz in the New Mexico rain.

But please, do it with clothes on.