I’m writing this in my breakfast room because my office is upstairs. Upstairs is an oven because the air conditioning upstairs crapped out. Outside is as hot as the seventh circle of hell because it’s Memphis in summer.

Hot. Can’t breathe hot like sucking every breath through a sponge. Can’t move hot because your clothes stick to you, the car seat sticks to you, the air sticks to you. Can’t see hot, because the sweat gets in your eyes, the heat rises from the pavement and distorts the view, like the air above bacon in a cast iron skillet.

Opinion: Angels are and have been with us

Nora walks the dog with a bottle of water to keep her moving, to pour over her to keep her from falling in the cool grass of every other yard and refusing to move. The her is the dog but that seems like a good idea to Nora as well.

Last night was the fourth without air conditioning in a bedroom with every fan we have on high. If a dog gets between me and a fan, the dog gets kicked. I’m not playing.

The AC guys are coming today. They may ask for the moon and the stars. They know they’ll get them. They came in a truck. They’ll leave in that truck and one of our cars. Maybe both.

And yet, I stay. I’m home.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting on the mansion-beset, elegant shore of Skaneateles Lake, one of New York’s gorgeous finger lakes, sipping something very cold looking at water even colder. Even the boat houses had gables and dormers and probably butlers. The boats going by included mahogany hulled Chris-Crafts and long sleek cabin cruisers. I believe they were throwing money overboard as they passed. All of it was old.

Opinion: The importance of bridges

That same week, I ate pasta in one of Syracuse’s storied family restaurants aged for generations in tradition and wood. There was a Vespa with a sidecar out front. Really. I believe the Corleones were a couple of booths over. All the bartenders were made men.

That whole week, we happily spent with our daughter and son-in-law, Hallie and Kyle Schorman, and the high on any day never broke 80. They cooked for us. They bought us prime steaks out. They had premium cable channels we don’t. They even had a new puppy to play with. All five dogs, our two and their three, got along famously. Hallie and Kyle gave me a UT hat for Father’s Day that I’ll never give up – unless, of course, the AC guys want it.

And yet, I missed home.

From there we went to Midlothian, Virginia, outside Richmond to visit our friend Mickey Shepherd in his brand-new house. The backyard runs down to a lovely little lake. There’s a log just offshore where the lake’s turtles hold their daily meetings. Every morning, 43 Canadian geese (I counted them) pass Mickey’s screened porch single file on the water before breaking up into smaller group sessions. There are herons out there and a pair of nesting bald eagles. One morning was so chilly mist blanketed the lake as I sipped my coffee on the porch and the mist rose like a curtain to reveal the goose chorus line.

Opinion: A pink palace by any other name won’t sound as sweet

Then it was on to lunch with Central Gardens ex-pats Robin and Dan Hatzenbuehler in charming Fearrington Village near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and then on for a couple of days with Hein Park ex-pats Robin and Dan Swanson – we’re fond of couples named Robin and Dan – in their new home on High Rock Lake near Charlotte.

We saw a spectacular sunset over the lake with the Swansons atop High Rock Mountain, a show running every night up there, and deer below the kitchen window. We visited a cemetery across from their church in Salisbury and saw tombstones of Cornwallis’ men from the Revolutionary War. The church dates from 1753, the cemetery from 1770.

And yet, I missed home.

The last night on the road was a wonderful evening in the Buckhead home of Kathie and Steve Larkin, friends since the Earth was cooling. Kathie was in Nora’s class at Central and Steve and I were fraternity brothers in college. Jesse and Bill Murray joined us for dinner and laughter was the main course. Bill is the rector at the Larkins’ church in Atlanta. He was a friend of Hallie’s in high school and presided at the marriage of our son Gaines and our daughter-in-law Courtney.

Opinion: A road trip from Memphis to Memphis

And then we came home, having touched home everywhere we went.

Home to a poor city so rich in personality, so creative with its limited assets, so sharing with what it has, so famous for what it has shared ­– ideas that changed everything, set to music, baked in the heat, made from enormous hearts, and the simplest of ingredients in the simplest of settings.

My Italian food is served in the concrete block ambiance of Pete & Sam’s and in any number of places with Grisanti genes. My views are all blocked by and shaded by trees. My memories are in the grid and grit of this place, on this river, in these people, those here and those deep in my bones.

My screened porch has no lake view, and the fountain is sometimes drowned out by a muffle-free Camaro in the Highland flight zone, but there are finches, and I can close my eyes and see the porch where I grew up just a half-mile or so from here.

The other day, I had lunch with eight friends, some I’ve known for 40 years and more, shoulder-to-shoulder at Celtic Crossing spilling beer watching England beat Germany.

Opinion: I was born lucky, but don’t tell anybody. That’s illegal.

I don’t have time to build those connections somewhere else. I won’t try.

It was my turn to buy, and what I was buying is priceless.

The AC guys are pulling up. Pray for me. I really need to keep one of the cars. And the hat.

I’m a Memphian, and while the place needs work, it’s home.