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The incredible, edible egg

By RICK RYCKELEY
Contributing Writer

It’s hot - REALLY hot. It’s so hot outside you can fry an egg on the street. I should know; I was there when Bubba Hanks proved it could be done. Not only that, but if you wait ‘til the temperature gets around 95 degrees (which should be about 10a.m.) and you can even cook an entire meal on a newly-paved asphalt street.

What in the world did folks down here in the South do before the invention of air conditioning? Thank goodness I wasn’t alive then because I surely would have died a slow, sweltering death during the summer. And that’s coming from a native Georgian.

Now I know people make fun of how slow Southerners talk, how slow we walk, and our affection for sweet tea. Rightly so, I guess. But there’s a good explanation for our seemingly strange behavior. It’s HOT down here in the South.

Have you gone outside lately? As soon as you walk outside the heat hits you in the face and sucks the cool air from your lungs — replacing it with something fresh out of a blast furnace. This kinda heat will steal your breath away. That’ll be the reason why we talk so slow - we can’t get a good breath. And if we walked any faster, we’d pass out from heat exhaustion.

But all is not lost. There are a few things that can cool you off when it gets this hot. That’d be sweet tea, good old Co-Cola, or fresh coconut milk.

The Wife was complaining the other day that even though she’d been in Georgia for the past 15 years, she hadn’t gotten used to all of the stifling heat. I came to her rescue as a loving husband should do. With great effort and personal sacrifice, I got out of my recliner, left the baseball game, walked over to the thermostat, and cut it down a bit. Flopping back down into my comfy, overstuffed recliner, I smiled and told her, “It’s not the heat that’s making it so unbearable; it’s the humidity.” That little tad-bit of information didn’t help to cool her off any.

Having failed with the scientific approach as to why July in Georgia is so unbearable, I decided to tell a story. “Why, I remember when we were growing up, it got so hot one summer you could fry an egg on the street.” The sideways glance from The Wife meant that she was hooked into my story, and as much as she tried, by the fifth inning, her curiosity finally got the best of her.

“You kids didn’t fry an egg on the street, did you?”

Proud of my dive into the culinary arts at the young age of eight I answered, “Yep. Sure did. And Bubba Hanks washed his down with some fresh coconut milk.”

Bubba Hanks wasn’t one to back down from a dare - especially if the dare involved food in any way. One such memorable gastronomic experience came when the paving crew finished the repaving of Flamingo Street. The dog days of August were upon us, and you couldn’t buy a cool breeze anywhere. By noon it was so hot even Goofy Steve stopped his normal clowning around and had to sit down. The baseball game down at the vacant lot next to Thomas’s had just ended, and all the neighborhood kids sat down on the curb to enjoy the cold slices of watermelon Mrs. Thomas had so kindly provided.

Sweat poured off our faces, mixing with the juice of the red watermelon, giving it a kinda sweet-salty taste. When we all had eaten our fill, Goof - feeling goofy again - innocently remarked, “Man, it’s so hot out here, I bet you could fry an egg on the street.” Unknowing, he had set a challenge into motion that would leave a permanent blemish on Flamingo Street and send Bubba Hanks to the hospital.

For the next 30 minutes, under the blazing sun, everyone argued whether one could fry an egg on Flamingo Street or not. Guess the argument would have continued forever if Bubba Hanks hadn’t spoke up and said with an iron expression on his face, “Bet I could fry a dozen eggs - and eat them too.”

We ran to the house to get a dozen eggs from Mom. Told her it was for a science experiment. I think she was so happy to see us thinking about school, she gave us the eggs without questions. Goof ran home and got some biscuit dough from his mom - she was baking a pie. And Thomas went to get the coconut he’d been saving for, well, I don’t really remember why he was saving it. But he said as long as Bubba was cooking, he’d needed something to wash all those eggs down with.

Bubba cooked the dozen eggs on the newly paved black asphalt street - cooked the biscuits, too. Something from the asphalt turned the eggs green while they cooked. Later we joked that he should have had ham with his green eggs.

Goof said it was the undercooked giant biscuit. Preston Weston said it was his week-old chocolate birthday cake. But if you asked me, it was all that coconut milk that got him sick. Bubba went to the hospital that night and came home the next day hungrier as ever. The green eggs left a permanent stain out in front of 110 Flamingo Street.

That summer was the hottest summer ever on Flamingo Street, and we all believed it was due to all that newly paved black asphalt. So you see, if they just stop paving all the streets around town with asphalt, then maybe it wouldn’t be so hot.

The Wife, she didn’t much believe my story about being able to fry a dozen eggs on a newly paved asphalt street. And she didn’t believe all that black top was the reason it’s so hot in the South. Guess we’ll just have to take a little road trip over to West Hwy. 54 going out of town. Heard there’s a lot of paving going on over there. And a lot of delays. I’m sure we’d be stuck in one place long enough to fry up a dozen eggs.