Midsummer musing

KQED, the local NPR outlet, runs listener commentaries they call “perspectives”. Yesterday, summer solstice, the contribution was from a Southerner about summer. & summer.

Basically, how summer in the Bay Area just doesn’t cut it. It’s not particularly different from any of the other seasons here. & she longs for the languid days & nights of the South.

I’m not really a Southerner (unless you count Southern Californian, because I am that), but I so agree with her. My years in Virginia & an unnamed state to the south of there have spoiled me when it comes to expecting changes as the seasons roll round.

Around here, spring, summer, autumn—all pretty much of a piece. During winter the temperatures dip…might reach the 50s or 60s. Boo-hoo. Otherwise, just unremitting cloudless skies & really dry air.

In Virginia, right about now hot, sticky days carry on into warm, sticky nights, but fireflies are lighting up the twilight & in wooded areas bats are coming out to catch their mosquito dinners. You can buy corn at roadside stands that was picked just this morning; it’s so sweet you almost don’t have to cook it to gobble it down. If you walk down the town street, people greet you, whether they know you or not.

When mom turns on the sprinklers & lets the kids run through them, it’s a joyful relief for all concerned.

I understand that air conditioning has changed a lot of the south—people go indoors & glue themselves to Netflix on 52” flat-screens instead of lounging on front porches drinking lemonade & watching their kids play. & now that places like Friendly’s are in bankruptcy, I’m not sure where you’d get your ice cream & grassy slope to cool down the evenings.

But I still miss it & I’d trade this dry, dusty paradise for the Old Dominion in two blinks of a June bug’s eye.