Some people say the weather in August shouldn’t happen to a dog, but I like hot weather. I sometimes would like it better if it weren’t so hot for so long, but by August, my feet have finally warmed up.

August is a sleek, well-fed cat, purring in the shade. The hectic energy of planting and early haying has subsided; August is what summer has been working up to since June. There’s a temporary truce now between the lawn and the lawnmower. Spring cleaning is over with and it’s too early to think about fall cleaning. Now, in deep summer, there’s time and opportunity to just sit and relax, and relax is one of the things I do best.

Certainly, Ozark summer days were not made for work. Mostly, I like summer nights. Whippoorwills have taken up their nightly chorus. Bats are stunt-flying around the place. Lightning bugs wink and blink among the trees across the road.

Summer has shifted into low gear for the time being and that suits my soul. Along about now, things get pretty slow in my neck of the woods. A certain ennui settles over everything—even the fish get lethargic. Average daily highs in the roast range push bass into the deepest holes along the river and there they sit (or lie or whatever it is fish do), slowing finning themselves with the coolest water they can find. No matter. I’m not in the mood for fishing anyway.

Here in the hills, late summer usually brings a stretch of dry weather. (I say “usually” because I don’t know that it “always” happens, but it has for the past 60 summers or so.) Our soil is a thin layer of orange-colored clay, veneered on top of a gravel pan. That kind of ground doesn’t hold water very well and doesn’t make very good use of what water it gets. My neighbor says that we’re only 10 days away from a drought, even when it’s pouring down rain.

But I’m not one to let a few rainless days spoil my summer. I like these days dripping away, like molasses off a warm spoon. I like to think that the Creator made the world in mid-summer; a verdant, shimmering globe that gave God a complete look at His handiwork. If He had created the earth in winter, He’d have had to wait until next summer to see how it really turned out.

A way with words
By Mitch Jayne

Anybody who has read this humor column for long knows how much I love the way Missourians talk. We have ways of expressing our opinions and thoughts that leap centuries of English. The fun part is that while one end of the state might contradict the other in geography, farming methods or climate, we all share that same way of saying what Ozarkers call “words with the bark on them.”

Mark Twain might be responsible for some of this. Of all Missouri writers, no one could cut to the chase like him, when it came to opinion. He said, “Man is the only animal who blushes—or needs to.” He was a lot like Harry Truman, another native Missourian, who, when they called him “Give ‘Em Hell Harry,” told a reporter; “I never give ‘em hell, I just tell ‘em the truth and they think it’s hell!”

What makes me write about our humor, though, isn’t the importance of what we say as much as the way we say it.

As Dan Saults, a former director of the conservation department, said years ago: “We’re not the Show-Me-state, we’re the Listen-to-Me state.” He thought the way we talk is a national treasure. I think he was right.

Missourians seem to have an instinct about how things can be said so somebody will remember them.

I remember one time, a local man in Dent County was running for office and promising some unreal improvements to our rural roads. One of my neighbors whispered, “Listen at that!” And being a schoolteacher, I had to say, “You mean, ‘listen to that.’” Her Missouri answer was right on. “No, he’s not talking to us. He’s talkin’ at us.”

Other states have unique ways of pronouncing things, like Minnesota’s “sneak” for snake, Louisiana’s “coib” for curb and “moicy” for mercy. Massachusetts “pock” for park, Georgia’s “At-lanna” dropping a ‘t’ and Alabama’s “Ala-balma” adding an ‘l’. One end of Virginia says “Lees-bug” instead of Leesburg and the other end says “aboot” instead of about, like they do in Canada. The folks in Mississippi end words in question marks: “She’s just the sweetest little thang evah made?” And in Idaho they close phone talks with “Well-fine-seeya-then-bye,” as if words up yonder were compressed by the cold.

But Missouri has more than just a way of talking, more than an accent. And it is more than the habit of renaming towns or rivers or people to suit our ears that turns Versailles into “Versales,” Bourbois into “Berbis,” Wyconda into “Walkin-daw” and Loutre into “Looter.” What we have is descriptive speech, like a neighbor of mine commenting on a bow-legged rider at a rodeo: “Now there is no way that man could ever catch-up a pig.” Missourians tend to draw pictures to express a thing.

My favorite one of these was an Ozark farmer’s definition of electing a new administration. “Why, it’s a lot like raisin’ hogs,” he told me. “You put them in their pen and support ‘em, let ‘em scrabble around ‘til you see they ain’t going to do no better, and then load them out and put in some new ones.”

What Missouri folks have, I suspect, is just more of a way with words.