Life Begins Again on Labor Day

By the end of August I start to feel like I live in the Land Down Under. While the northern two thirds of the nation is wishing for a few more days of glorious summer and thinking about all the things they didn’t do while the weather was good, I’m celebrating that I can finally walk outside after 9:00 AM. While people in cooler parts of the nation are thinking there’ll be no more cookouts for awhile, I’m thinking, “Crikey! I can finally stand it outside long enough to burn a couple of hotdogs on the barbie.

I was up in Michigan in early August when the temperatures soared up into the low nineties. At my hotel the clerk was boasting about their 102 degrees—with the heat index. Heat index? Down here in Texas, we don’t need no stinking heat index! It’s 102 degrees without it. We need wind chill factors! Our temperatures here in the DFW Metroplex have dipped down into the low nineties this past week. We’ll call it “plummeting” when they drop down to eighty.

“. . .to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky. . .” John Lubbock. “. . .is to be eaten alive by fire ants.” Me

If you drive through my neighborhood on an average summer day in July, August or September, you don’t hear the laughing voices of children playing in their yards; you hear the hum of air conditioners. Up north where summers are wonderful, they’re way too short, and down here where summers are brutal, they’re interminable. Since my son is all finished with school, it doesn’t matter to me anymore, but kids here are robbed. It is so unfair that during the summer, when the kids are home from school, it’s too damned hot to go outside and play. When we do get a fine summer day sometime in late October or early November, kids down here are stuck in a classroom all day.

While some of you are getting out the stadium blankets and thermoses for your football games, we’re still packing sunscreen and towels to absorb the sweat at ours. If you don’t believe me just watch one of the Big 12 or SEC college football games on TV. Those aren’t tears you see rolling down the fans’ cheeks. That’s pure sweat!

“Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December.” Anderson; Weill

As the days get shorter and minutely cooler, and the angle of the sun gives the sky a golden glow, I start to feel a surge of energy. It’s possible that the energy is actually the high I get from my allergy medicine in the fall, but I don’t care. I love the end of summer and the beginning of winter. The electric and water bills start to free fall and I finally get a reprieve from the weeds in my yard. The lawn service guys stop mowing sometime in November so I have money to spend for Christmas shopping!

With autumn just around the bend, I begin to really miss the pungent smell of just-raked leaves burning by the side of the road on a gray, November morning. Yes, it’s bad for the environment, but it’s not illegal to remember it. I also miss the taste of ice cold, just-pressed apple cider and fresh cake donuts at the cider mill in my hometown. Hmmm. And no, of course I don’t miss thawing out my car for thirty minutes before I can drive it to work early in the morning. I’m nostalgic—not insane.

Donna