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As the high temperatures persisted, Lionel Anderson, a St. Louis bus driver, began passing out cups of ice water to his passengers. When a carriage horse collapsed on a street in New Orleans' French Quarter, tourists pulled off their shirts, drenched them in water, and tried to revive the fallen animal. In San Antonio, Roman Catholic Archbishop Patrick Flores asked priests in his 32-county jurisdiction to lead prayers for rain at Sunday Masses. Worshipers at the nondenominational Community Church of Our Lord in Austin had special cause to pray for tempered temperatures: someone stole the big air conditioner from the Rev. Bill Spivey's sanctuary.
The economic consequences of the heat wave are only beginning to be registered. In Arkansas, hundreds of sections of highways have buckled and melted under the sun. Estimated repair cost: $8 million. So far, Texas farmers have lost about $1 billion in cotton, corn and sorghum crops. Ranchers from Fort Worth to Fargo, N. Dak., have been forced by scorched grazing lands and dried-up stock ponds to send their herds to the auction barn ahead of schedule. Inevitably food prices, whose relative stability has been one of the bright spots in the nation's dismal inflation picture, are bound to shoot up as a result of the rising temperatures.
The cause of all the exceptional heat, a broad high-pressure system hovering over the middle part of the country, was showing little sign of moving on. As a result, there was every possibility that what was already established as the worst drought that many areas of the U.S. had experienced in 25 years would continue to exact a heavy toll. ∎