Banquettes and Eggs

Our News Media is going berserk, again. Currently they are acting as if what we are being subjected to has never happened before ... or has it?

What am I talking about? Excuse me but I thought all of you already knew. It’s the Heat! Heat stories dominate the news on the opening of every broadcast. They are acting as if it has never gotten hot before. I find myself shouting at the TV, “Don’t you know it’s Summer Time!”

Sometimes I wonder about myself, shouting like that. I actually know the TV can’t hear me but I do it anyway. I’m sure glad I am the only person who knows I shout at TVs.

You may find this hard to believe but, when I was growing up, we had summers every year.

I grew up in New Orleans. Harkening back to our French Heritage we used to call (maybe still do) a sidewalk a “banquette” (bank-it). I can remember my father saying, “It is so hot out there you can fry an egg on the banquette.”

One day I decided to see if my father knew of which he spoke. I got one of my mother’s eggs out of the ice box (now known as a refrigerator) and went out and cracked it on the banquette and it actually did fry.

That must have been a big day in my growing up because I remember this incidence so well and I can almost smell the egg and banquette aroma coming up to my little nostrils.

Cracking eggs on the banquette was fun and educational but shouting at TVs is neither. Next time I get the urge to shout at the TV, I ought to go take a walk on the banquette. Actually I have thought about doing just that but have not done so as of yet because it is so hot out there.

Would I kid u?