Warm day in November

 

September 28, 1979

 

The clerk at Quick Chek finally admitted global warming may be real. This comes after more than a year of Pauly’s lectures over morning coffee and a buttered roll.

Pauly has been selling this conspiracy theory for so long I’ve come to accept it as chapter and verse, although most people see us as crazy because life goes on, and any assumption that our way of life is destroying all life on earth is un-American as best.

Pauly claims the polar ice caps are melting and that we are in for a terrible time in the future, massive storms, odd weather, and an assortment of other natural disasters such as earthquakes in unexpected places and volcanic activity.

He ought to be the guy in Times Square with a sign saying “the end of the world is here.”

But with the temperature rising to 70 today, even skeptics like the Quick Chek clerk start to wonder. Of course, we’re not going to see any red blooded American giving up his or her car any time soon just because the seas might rise and flood cities along the coast as Pauly claims will happen. Hell, we might all need our cars to escape the flood waters, although most people won’t move at all, clinging to their life in the city no matter how high the waters rise. This is the lemming theory, Pauly points out. People are too stupid to get out of their own way.

That won’t be me. When Pauly calls. I’ll come running. I’ll even bring my swimming trunks.