Conaway: The Fourth is in all of us
Dan Conaway
Dan Conaway was a freelance columnist with The Daily Memphian from 2018 to 2025.
You walk outside, and it’s so hot you can’t breathe. Feels like you could carve the air. Humidity is roughly that of a swimming pool. A heated pool. The heat index is triple digits. You stand next to someone taller just for the shade. If there’s a breeze, it’s air from a furnace. And the furnace is on. Your shirt, your pants and anything under sticks to you like a wet rag. A hot wet rag.
It’s hot enough to melt the Doughboy statue’s iron bayonet in Overton Park.
It’s July Fourth in Memphis.
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