This part of Georgia is not supposed to be tropical

It's Sunday night, and I just got back from the grocery store where folks are stocking up on all the necessities — namely vienna sausages and beer. In fact, they were clean out of vienna sausages, so for dinner tonight I might be having beer with my beer.

I have to write my columns before they actually appear in the newspaper. That's just the way it works. If you get your paper at 3:30 in the morning, I can't write my column at 3:25 in the morning. I have to write it far enough in advance so that the editors can comb through it just enough to find out who might be sending angry letters and emails the next day.

(In case you're wondering, those folks who get most offended are usually the ones that scream “Snowflake!” at everyone else most often. I think that's called irony. Or perhaps that word just means a warm shirt with no wrinkles in it as in, “Honey, did you press my Margaritaville shirt? It feels kind of irony.)

Because I'm writing this a little early, I have to assume that we all lived through whatever tropical weather roared through here on Monday. Or maybe it was just a light breeze that smelled like whitefish. Who knows? We're all in the cone of uncertainty, which, coincidentally, is what my teachers called my funny-shaped head in high school.

In this part of Georgia and Alabama, we should not be getting winter weather or tropical weather. It's not fair. If you're going to get snow and ice, you ought to be able to get enough to ski Pine Mountain all season. And if you're going to get tropical cyclones, you ought to be able to get all the good stuff that comes with living at the beach.

Right now, it seems that we only get the bad stuff that comes with living on the coast — heat, humidity, giant bugs and, now, hurricanes.

Some people — none of whom are named Rush — believe this kind of crazy weather we're having is the result of climate change, something in which 98 percent of scientists believe. That's a pretty big number considering that it was just a few decades ago that only 90 percent of dentists recommended sugar-free gum for their patients who chewed gum. You young folks may not remember those commercials, but Trident apparently found that a whopping 10 percent of dentists recommended sugary gum for their patients, something I found as suspicious as an Equifax executive cashing in a bunch of stocks.

I don't necessarily believe the scientists. After all, this is a group of folks who might be able to predict a solar eclipse down to the exact second decades in advance, but they also have told us that the sun is 93 million miles away. I find that to be way too exact a number. Are we sure the sun is not 93,000,043 miles away?

Anyway, if this tropical weather is going to become a regular occurrence around here, I'm going to need some other beach conveniences around here, including drive-thru daiquiri bars, three-dollar t-shirts, all-you-can-eat seafood buffets, 75-degree January days and girls throwing beads at me when I lift up my shirt.

Let me try that last one. Here comes a car. Nope, not working. No beads. Wait, they are turning around. Hmm, that chick has a beard and large biceps. Still no beads though. He just hit me with something hard, though. Awesome! It's a can of vienna sausages!

Score!

This story was originally published September 11, 2017 at 9:49 AM with the headline "This part of Georgia is not supposed to be tropical."