The Long Hot Day

          The Long Hot Day

Suzanne Marsh

July, 2023

“Good Morning, this KTX TV with this morning’s weather report, in a word; HOT”

The high today is going to be one hundred and five degrees with the heat index it will feel like

one hundred and ten.”

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to throw something at the smiling weatherman, turn the air up, and start the fans that we strategically placed in several rooms. I chose the latter and made the circuit of the bedrooms and office. I also had the overhead fan in the living room going. Nothing seemed to help, late menopause? Who knows. Later that morning I was looking at FaceBook when I came across a picture that presented a challenge. The sentence below a picture reads:

“It is so hot a woman made bread in her mailbox.” I had to try it, that was a real challenge since making bread is not my forte. It was close to noon, when I began to search for a recipe, planning to try to make the bread the following morning putting it out in the mailbox after breakfast, I figured by one o’clock the following afternoon I would have bread baked in my plastic mailbox. I began by getting the supplies I needed from the store, flour, and yeast, primarily. Once I had those I returned home and began to read the instructions on how to bake bread. My husband’s mother taught him to make bread, a fat lot of good that did me, he was at work, I was home, and I was determined to make the bread and bake it in the mailbox. It was not the smartest thing I ever did in my life.

I began by getting out an extra large bowl, according to the directions the entire ordeal would rough two hours and forty minutes, do not believe what the recipe says at least not when you have not got a clue as to how to make bread. Until that day the closest I ever got to making bread was when I stuck my finger into a loaf of bread; that my husband’s mother was making, but that is a different story.

I began to read the recipe: mix the yeast and warm water together, set aside, and let it rise. That seemed easy enough, the yeast came with four packets, so not having a clue I mixed all four into the rest of the dough which consisted of:

yeast, warm tap water, salt sugar mile butter, and all-purpose flour.

Simple enough right? Wrong, I mixed all the ingredients then covered the bowl, and put it out in the garage, they said it needed a warm place to rise, the garage was almost as hot as the outdoors. I went about my normal day when Alexa interrupted my train of thought with her simple but irritating voice:

“TODAY IS GOING TO BE ANOTHER HOT ONE FOLKS, THERE IS A HEAT ADVISORY

ISSUED FOR ALL OF CENTRAL TEXAS.”

Wonderful, that should make the bread rise quicker out in the garage. Our garage is a dangerous place; if you are as sure-footed as a mountain goat. I had placed the bowl on the top of the washing machine. It had been almost three hours since I had put the bread out there to rise. I reread the directions again; discovering the bread should only need ninety minutes to rise. I made my to the washer, and went to pick up the bread, it was heavy but somehow I managed to get it into the kitchen.

I removed the towel that was covering the bowl, and there sat this massive white blob, according to the directions I had to punch it down gently, that would have been fine if the damn doorbell had not rung while I was punching the dough. The blob disappeared and there sat something closely resembling a huge matzo ball. I was puzzled, I had no idea what I had done wrong but there it sat.

I quickly got on the web asking how to unflatten a punched loaf of bread. The web was somewhat helpful, youtube showed something that looked similar to the distressed flatbread on the kitchen counter. Somehow I had to find a way to re-knead the bread. It was stuck to the counter like glue. Sweat was beginning to run down my face, this was getting me nowhere in a hurry. I pulled up a kitchen chair, got my cell phone out, and started to dial my husband’s work number, no I started this and I was going to see it through, come hell or high water. So instead I found the YouTube heading about punching the bread too hard. The only thing I did correctly was put the bread on the countertop, no one said anything about putting flour on the counter to knead the dough, I guess they just assumed I knew I had to do that. How am I ever going to get that mess of my countertop, into the mailbox and have it ready for dinner?

I was beginning to panic, but I regained control, I found a bread knife in the knife drawer, well according to the directions on YouTube; I began to scrape it off the counter, and I managed to get it back into the bowl. Hey, this was progress, I kneaded the bread and placed it back in the bowl, and lugged the bowl back out into the garage, hell I could have baked the bread in the garage for that matter. This time I set a timer for ninety minutes. Once again I began doing my household chores, and the timer dinged. I lugged the bread back in, man, was it heavy. I had a bread tin so I pushed it all in there. I then proceeded to the plastic mailbox and put the bread inside, leaving the red flag down so the mailman would not open it. I also kept an eye open just in case he did open it causing the bread to fall.

Four hours later I went to see how the loaf of bread was doing, I opened the door, and out oozed a gigantic white blob of something. Why hadn’t it baked? I was certainly hot enough to cook bread in a mailbox. I spent the rest of a very long hot day; cleaning out the mailbox. The mailman must have thought I had lost whatever reasoning I had when he opened the other end of the mailbox to put in the mail, it was the first time we met face to face. Somehow I doubt he will ever forget, a woman attempting to get an oozing blob out of her mailbox.