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Hill City, Kan.: 'Hell, it's the hottest place on Earth'
- Updated: July 1, 2012 - 9:17 PM
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HILL CITY, KAN. - This town on the parched plains, best known for its bountiful pheasant hunting and museum of oil history, has earned a new, if unwelcome, distinction -- the center of America's summer inferno.
For five days last week, a brutal heat wave crested at 115 degrees. Crops wilted. Streets emptied. Farmers fainted in the fields. Air-conditioners gave up. Children even temporarily abandoned the municipal swimming pool. Hill City was, for a spell, in the ranks of the hottest spots in the country.
"Hell, it's the hottest place on Earth," said Allen Trexler, an 81-year-old farmer who called himself Old Man Trexler. He spoke while standing in the shade of a tree on Saturday morning, the temperature already 100.
Later, Trexler loaded three heifers into a maroon trailer and trundled them 70 miles to Oakley to sell them. "We're just going to have to sell," said his son Brad, 58. "There's no way out. Every time they take a bite of that grass, it's gone. It doesn't come back."
NEW YORK TIMES
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