The Heat is On
Here in Virginia Beach, it is 86 degrees with 76% humidity, which my weather app says makes it feel like 98 degrees. If you asked anyone in our party, especially those who wandered through the USS Wisconsin, going four decks below the water line into the bowels of this steel battleship, they would add about another 15 degrees to that. I checked our hilltop and see that it is 84 degrees there, but with a humidity level of 42%, that made the weather feel like 85 degrees. This trip east for a few days this summer reminds me all too well why I like living in San Diego. I have often said that I hate the tropics, having spent six of my earliest years there and feeling that it just is not for me. I know you can get used to anything, but what I am experiencing and remembering is that drippy dampness that permeates your whole being in this sort of weather and how it is simply miserable. What we had a particularly hard time imagining here in their Navy town was how the sailors stationed on the USS Wisconsin could possibly survive living onboard a battleship in such confined spaces, in such a nasty tropical climate, packed in like sardines. Its no wonder that during WWII they hit the beaches with such vehemence. But during peacetime, like when this particular battleship was decommissioned in the 1980’s, how the hell did they survive or put up with these conditions?
Last night after our day of Norfolk sightseeing we treated ourselves to a dinner at the fancy restaurant in the old Cavalier Hotel, which is connected to this beachside Marriott. The Cavalier is a one hundred year old grand dame of a hotel that was built to signify the transition of Virginia Beach from a little local village to a beach resort for the rich and famous of the Roaring Twenties. Like Atlantic City and Asbury Park, Virginia Beach represents the start of the American experiment with leisure. Before that time, the hardscrabble life in America was all about work, work, work to survive. But the Second Industrial Revolution started to change that and we were moving into the era of “a chicken in every pot” and “a car in every driveway”. That didn’t mean that normal Americans could all afford a beach vacation at the Cavalier, but there was the start of a leisure class of affluent Americans who could and an able-bodied group of Americans who were entrepreneurial and work ethic oriented enough to give them the high service that monied leisure demands.
That socioeconomic distinction seems to remain in place today as those who are sitting around the lobby of the Cavalier seem better dressed and more clubby than the unwashed masses down at the beach, where instead of antique furniture in the lobby like the Cavalier boasts, the Marriott looks to be furnished out of West Elm or Target. We chose to eat outdoors in a moment of weakness when the sea breezes promised a pleasant repast on the veranda. The sun had started to go down and the humidity with it. Indeed, the vine-covered pergola (what we regular folks out west call a palapa) created a pleasant and hopeful ambiance at the far side of the terrace. Then the theater of the absurd began.
While the breeze stayed with us and the heat was on but not so oppressive, to use a southern metaphor, our wait staff of one was gone with the wind. This poor middle-aged schnook was tasked to handle the entire southern end of the terrace and our table for ten was decidedly outside his sphere of capability. We sat for almost an hour without so much as a drink in front of us. Whatever heat was being dissipated by the breeze was building up under my collar since this was not a cheap restaurant. Everyone spoke to me like John Fetterman was speaking to his fellow Democrats after the debate…I was being told to “calm the fuck down”. But once an hour had passed, even Roger and Thomas, who were in a far better mood than me, were getting the joke and wondering who to talk to next. We finally got a official looking southern gentleman dressed in a skinny suit and he indeed took charge of the situation and turned things around. We were suddenly inundated with drinks, wine, appetizers and popovers. The food was pretty good and the main courses, ordered hours before, started to arrive from squadrons of kitchen folk sent to assist the poor waiter. While the food was actually quite good, this all started a discourse on the status of the service economy we enjoyed in this country after the manufacturing economy went on vacation to Asia in the 1980s. The conclusion from my son Roger, who manages service businesses and has to recruit service workers regularly, is that no one wants to work for $15 an hour any more. Once they have seen TicToc and realized how much influencers can get without having to bus dishes, they are hard to get “back on the farm” or the in the kitchen. This started a debate about whether the internet was good or bad for the sense of happiness among the masses. I’m afraid it is a forgone conclusion that thinking you can put this genie back in the bottle is not realistic…or very enlightened…and we have to learn how to get AI to bring us our food in restaurants on a timely basis.
But that bring us to an interesting modern issue. I recall reading an article in National Geographic that discussed the urgent problem of the declining insect population. These little buggers that tend to annoy or disgust us in most situations are quite necessary for the ecosystem to survive and apparently modern life and climate change are making it harder and harder for that to be the case. Well, let me tell you, there is nothing to worry about here in Virginia Beach. as soon as our food came from the kitchen, a literal squadron of houseflies (or maybe they were sand flies…who knows) descended on us and started dive bombing our newly delivered plates of food. I was sitting next to my daughter Carolyn and her genetic makeup is somewhere between the steely resoluteness of a marathoner and the frantic panicky excitedness of a little girl. Insects are simply not her favorite thing…by far. So we spent our dinner alternating between grabbing a bite here and swatting a fly there. By this point it was all just one big joke and we were all over it at the Cavalier and headed back across the street to the common folks’ ice cream parlor, where Roger critiqued the staffing efficiency of the crew, since one of his jobs is running a hand-dipped home-made ice cream shop. We ended the evening learning about the benefits of 14% butter fat solution for making smooth but deadly deserts.
Luckily, today, my son Roger has budgeted us to be spending most of the day at the pool. That is particularly good since it is supposed to be 92 degrees with a 70% humidity index. I don’t know how the weather people do their comfort index math, but that tells me we are heading up to a “feels like” level of 105 + degrees. That is just nasty, even if you are spending the day in the pool. So, we will see what our last day in Virginia Beach has to offer us. The worst part of it will be that the heat is definitely on here in the Deep South (I understand that Virginia barely qualifies, but it WAS the center of the Confederacy, you know). We will start with breakfast at Arbuckle’s, named for Fatty Arbuckle, the silent film star that frequented Virginia Beach for his debauchery. The good part of the day will be a final chance to have a few laughs eith all the kids in tow trying to stay cool.