In the Mojave Desert, summer really launches in maybe mid-May. Temperatures start building into what will be detested as summer. Try as outdoor Las Vegas leisure attractions do, there’s little anticipation of sun, fun, and frolic.

Yes, Southern Nevada resorts lure with dayclubs, DJs, and cabanas. However, the pleasure of sweltering on shaded concrete eludes my notion of enjoyment.

September after Labor Day is, as the French have labeled it, “reentry.” The speed of life acerates, living therefore resumes meaning.

August, though? Its 31 days are a continuous loll. What more is there to do in August than laze?

I held this belief even before relocating to Nevada. Where lolling and lazing in the Northeast fit in with acceptable sloth at the beach or the shore, these earned idles rewards for autumns’, winters’, and good chunks of springs’ productive weeks. The same respite in the Mojave is a mechanism against torrid summer.

Owing to relentless heat, the backyard gatherings seen, heard, and enjoyed which mushroomed across lawns back in my native East are rare summer occurrences in Las Vegas. Certainly, they’re held but the heat saps much of the vitality from these fetes. As many a California transplant has learned from any long-residence neighbors, it’s prudent to wait until sometime in October before indulging in any outdoor entertainment centering around a barbecue.

Don’t know if still holds true or had it just been a tall tale at the expense of tenderfeet from the west, but a common fable ran about Californians who hadn’t done due diligence before moving into Southern Nevada. After selling homes on the Coast that yielded enormous sums, they buy more square footage in Nevada for less. As always in the tellings, the newcomers would then go beyond whole hog to transform their backyards into plush greenswards.

I’m still amazed at transplants who come to the desert and rather than find beauty in the starkness, choosing natural landscaping, homeowners spring for lawns so lush one may believe they’d been yanked from, say, Gold Coast Connecticut, and sodded 2400 miles west. Once the verdancy has been lain then comes an extravagant patio. One further enhanced by either a firepit or a grill elevated upon a plateau of exquisite masonry.

Maybe there will even be a pool. What best demonstrates indifference to a water-stressed region than a new private pool?

Naturally the premises offers a wet bar whose ample awning provides shade for its bartender and seated imbibers. Flatscreens, sound systems with speakers mounted in stereophonic fashion under the awning, and misting fans further gild an elaborately casual spot.

And just when everything is in place, the thermometer cracks 100. During mid-spring days, the mercury may drop 20-30° at sunset through radiational cooling. But sooner than anybody likes come days when the triple digits start edging into the 110s and constant misery drops anchor.

Being outdoors on low 100° nights with little-to-no breeze stirring is conducive to few outdoor pleasantries.

Long-time Nevada residents usually have good chuckles when Californians discover their pleasure pads won’t be available until a week or two into fall. Just in time to recap Rams’ or Niners’ games.

Now deeper into Year Two of Retirement, desert heat has compelled me to rearrange my daily schedule. During the temperate months, I leave home early, hit the sports book, then perform errands. Instead, during summer when the later hours are molten and with my front windows facing west, the pattern is reversed.

I stay in the front room until the sun starts throwing shadows eastward then leave. One of the advantages is it allows giving horse tracks’ racing overnights one more once over before firing up the betting app and placing wagers. A second advantage is it gives me an opportunity to read online editions of The New York Daily News and Los Angeles Times before the current day edges too close to tomorrow. Besides, New Yorker as I remain though removed to Las Vegas, reading The News keeps me apprised of “civilization.”

I read The Times to have an outlook to what may affect Nevada.

Although I realized early I was never cut out to be an Angeleno, Times’ reportage does sometimes make the L.A. Basin alluring. Of course, living in Las Vegas, I have frequented the Left Coast. Attending live sporting events (not so much now since UCLA and USC have abandoned the PAC for the Big 10 and the Angels stink), the beach, museums. And I see how seductive life out there can be. One must be numb from the neck up not to find the possibility of living there attractive.

Even before California detractors raise the specters of greater expense and insanely congested traffic, coming from New York my adjusting to both would be easier than, say, someone from regions other than the Northeast. Like a Nevadan.

Arriving from the City of Brotherly Shove or the Hub, moving to the Coast could be seen as a lateral one. A step down at first, but lateral nonetheless. But from elsewhere? They might see Los Angeles or San Francisco as Planet Claire.

Never really considered why I’d have been a bad California fit. Maybe because unlike the East, California ill-defined. Expansive rather than compact. Horizontal instead of vertical. At least to this Easterner’s reckoning. So spatial not cultural. That plus could I ever accustom myself to seeing Pacific sunsets after a lifetime of watching Atlantic sunrises?

Yes, it’s inexplicable how the mundane shapes us. Rather than being easily shrugged off, these facets seep through skin into bone and affix in our consciousness.

Besides, pineapple on pizza? Really, now.

Heading out in the latter parts of summer days lets me indulge in Las Vegas’ ubiquitous air conditioning. Why jack up home chilling during the heat of the day when every commercial enterprise offers it as enticement and respite? Furthermore, with the sports book’s cool setting, its panoply of widescreens, quarter acre of comfy seats, and circulating waitresses, why hurry to again brave the brilliantly sunny, brutally hot world outside in the Mojave Desert?

Unlike the summer days of adolescence, my retirement TV viewing occupies late-night hours. In childhood, I would’ve watched daytime reruns in the mornings. The Donna Reed Show. Dennis the Menace. Leave It to Beaver. When soap operas came on, that was the signal to finish up breakfast then spend the rest of the day outdoors with whoever could be found in the park or the field.

My New York suburban hometown of Quarropas maintained excellent summer fun facilities. On weekdays, the city staffed numerous neighborhood parks with seasonal employees. They provided and monitored board and table games from mid-mornings into afternoons. The Quarropas recreation department also erected temporary aboveground swimming pools that let us city kids splash from July through August.

If we could assemble enough players, instead of shaded or aquatic pursuits in the park, we’d head down to the field, pick sides and play baseball. Yes, hardball. No catcher, no strike zone, just swing at pitches close enough to the plate. Looking back, we’d be playing under the heat of the day. Fortunately, a water fountain spouted nearby. Water, no sports drink loaded with electrolytes. What the fountain spurted precluded loading a cooler and lugging and leaving it somewhere outside the lines.

Would we even have done that in adolescence? Sounds more like a teens’ action.

It’s difficult now to accept that a lot of our baseball got started around high noon. Older today, how didn’t we feel the heat then? Should we sweat as much now as we must’ve then during our exertions, wouldn’t we seize up through heat stroke today?

That said, being in such shape as 55-60 years ago is the only part of that long-ago boy I’d revive for today.

These days in Nevada, rerun watching happens around midnight. Instead of breakfast, beer or cocktails accompany what’s being streamed. And rather than be lulled by black & white half hours of ideal mid-century suburban living (Only dad needed to work. Mom was a domestic goddess who vacuumed in pumps and A-line dresses. Their children, irrepressible scamps all, got into hijinks which were resolved within every show’s 24-minute running times.), the viewing now is decidedly complex.

The Wild Wild West. Mannix. The original Hawaii 5-0. Particularly the last two. The Wild Wild West was a sagebrush fantasy.

While I watched all the above during their original broadcast runs, I’m enjoying them far more these evenings. For one thing, as an adult, topics, situations, and themes that zoomed over the boy’s head this adult of today grasps. Deeper borne of experience insights improve the programs. Further enhancing 21st century viewing has been introduction of refinements that sharpen, then deliver more vivid images on eyeballs.

Or maybe what had been previously broadcast was always vibrant and the era’s TVs just lacked capabilities to emit such from our sets.

Anyway, 2026 colors pop.

Returning to the latter programs’ scripts, they aren’t the simpleminded basic structure stories that filled the adolescent’s black & white mornings’ viewing. No homilies. No moralizing. No laugh tracks. No “lessons” to be imparted. Nor before closing credits was the world restored to its bland, cushy yet crushing order until the next episode. One which would proceed then conclude in similar manner as prior installments.

Mannix and the original Hawaii 5-0 integrated plenty of contemporary messy America in their plotlines. These weren’t just “cop shows.”

Vietnam, mental illness, ecological despoilment, the awareness and appreciation of the different cultures blossomed in the late 60s/early 70s founds ways insidious and overt onto American TV screens. Through these shows (and doubtlessly others of this era) it’s no exaggeration to state plenty of mainstream society at least started becoming conscious of “peripheral” Americans’ habits, views, and lives.

Whether intentions were purposely aimed or subliminal goals, casting in the three serials yanked a lot of ordinarily marginalized Americans onto the mainstream stage. Sitcoms like Julia and Room 222 did plenty to placate nervous or otherwise mollify anxious Anglos fearful about post-civil rights blacks.

That they were no threat to order.

Watching some of those comedies’ episodes now, carefully written and produced to be as inoffensive as possible, younger present-day viewers accustomed to our vocal society may wonder how didn’t Julia or Mr. Dixon roll on their backs in anticipation of tummy rubs from Dr. Nolan or Principal Kaufman, respectively.

Say this for the cop show reruns, in each non-Anglo characters aren’t “tame.” They’re full-blooded, fully-voiced people. None are idols or model figures. All the more so in the original Hawaii 5-0.

Filmed throughout the islands, in locations high and low, elegant and seedy, instead of Hollywood stages and Los Angeles streets, seeing those native Hawaiians in crucial roles must’ve jarred a lot of mainlanders’ hoary racial notions. Good.

Early DEI? No. Just drawing attention to the less regarded tiles forming our American mosaic from an adventurous age of television.

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