How do we celebrate the Fourth of July around here?
We sweat.
And pray for the good health of our air conditioners.
Now, when the Fourth actually gets here, I ain’t going to do anything that involves standing outside over a hot grill and cooking.
My gentleman friend Lust don’t do that either. He sits in his air-conditioned bar, The Sloth Lounge, and makes money off of daiquiris and frozen Irish coffee. Poor thing.
And me and the Gunches follow our tradition of going to a megaplex movie theater and watching movies all day by sneaking from one to the other.
Even my mother-in-law Ms. Larda comes along.
But before any of that could happen last year, tragedy struck. Ms. Larda’s air conditioner died.
Now, Ms. Larda lives in a double, and her two sons, Leech and Lurch, live on the other side. But unfortunately they all share the same air conditioner — the dead one.
So there’s nothing else to do but call the air conditioner repair man — and around here, an air conditioner repairman in June is scarcer than a house without roaches. They are all busy.
So she packs up and goes to her daughter Gloriosa’s for the duration.
Leech and Lurch stay home and wait for the air conditioner guy. It’s hot, hot, hot. So hot, they are sleeping on the floor. They walk around the house in their underwear — unfortunately, tighty whities.
They open every single window. Most of them ain’t been open in a while, or maybe never, and Lurch and Leech have to use various stuff to prop them open with — iron frying pans, picture frames, chunks of campfire firewood, whatever they can find.
It ain’t fun. They are both sweating and growling at each other, searching for things to prop with, and Lurch hands Leech an axe.
“An AXE?” says Leech.
“You don’t like axes?” Lurch snarls. “Find something else!” and stomps off outside to look for some more pieces of firewood.
A few minutes later, the doorbell rings — just as Leech is trying to wedge this axe into a living room window.
“WHAT THE HELL, YOU CAN’T OPEN THE #%*# DOOR?” he yells, and with the axe in his hand, he yanks it open.
But it ain’t his brother Lurch standing there. It’s the air-conditioner man, a smallish sort of guy. He gets one look at this hairy man, who is NOT small, sweating in his tighty whiteys and holding a axe, and he spins around and runs for his life.
And no matter how much they call the air conditioner company and try to explain, and beg and plead and grovel, he won’t come back.
And all the other air conditioning companies claim they are overbooked. Maybe air conditioning companies got a private line where they warn each other about customers in their underwear holding axes.
Meanwhile Ms. Larda is calling every day to ask about the air conditioner.
After a week of this, Lurch and Leech go pick up Ms. Larda and they all three go over personally and swear to the first air conditioner man that they ain’t dangerous. Just hot.
Finally, he relents. He says he will go back if Ms. Larda is there.
And the next day, he comes over with a partner, who happens to be a good-sized lady named Girtha with biceps a professional wrestler would envy.
And Girtha stands guard while the little guy does the repair. It’s done in less than an hour, but they charge a lot — being as they include an axe fee.
“It’s OK,” says Lurch, while Ms. Larda writes the check. “Everything’s cool.”
And finally, it is.
