I laughed out loud when I saw the weather app on my phone warned of an Extreme Heat Advisory because the temperature was going to hit eighty but would feel like it was closer to eighty-four.
At the time, I wasn’t home in St. Louis, where the same app told me the feels-like temp was a typical-for-summer 258 degrees. Living here on days like that, just walking out to our mailbox is enough to make me sweat so much it takes three dryer cycles to reduce the moisture level in my clothes to “damp.”
If you’re wondering what kind of place thinks eighty degrees deserves an Extreme Heat Advisory, the answer is Newport, Rhode Island.
We had traveled there because one of our nieces was getting married. The good news was the skies stayed clear, the humidity level stayed low, and neither the maid of honor nor the best man gave speeches that went on and on. As a topper, while the reception took place on a cliff overlooking Narragansett Bay, we also witnessed a sunset so magnificent that every human being present went outside to capture it for their Instagram feeds.
I had never been to Newport, but it was everything I expected it to be — an enclave of very upper-class homes with expansive lawns surrounding a downtown strip of businesses designed to wring every possible dollar out of tourists (restaurants, bars, souvenir shops, jewelry stores). And, like in similar locales, we were at all times within 100 feet of a fudge shop.
Newport is also home of the International Tennis Hall Of Fame, which is set in a club that was the original host site of the US Open. It still has thirteen grass courts, open to the public (as long as you wear white, and not just your skin color).
As I’ve mentioned before, my wife is a huge tennis fan (she’ll spend quite a bit of time over the next two weeks watching Wimbledon), so we went inside the Hall Of Fame to look around. I was impressed at many of the displays, including trophies from tournaments played long ago, and a few recent ones, too. There’s a video about the Grand Slams narrated by Roger Federer. There’s a letter Martin Luther King Jr. sent to Arthur Ashe in February, 1968, thanking him for his support of the civil rights movement.
There’s a display from decades ago of old wooden tennis rackets with heads so small their sweet spots couldn’t have been larger than a dime. My wife blanched at an array of outfits women players had to wear in that era, complete with corsets and full-length dresses.
There were also exhibits about some of the records held by Hall Of Famers. I was impressed that Ash Barty held on to the number one ranking for 121 weeks, while Federer’s run lasted 237 weeks. Both of them were topped by Steffi Graf, who stayed in the peak spot for 377 weeks. But none of them could touch the record held by wheelchair tennis champion Esther Vergeer, who claimed the top rank in April, 1999, and held it until January, 2013, a total of 668 weeks!
Anyone who played against her should have been issued an Esther Heat Advisory.