Saturday

Thank god this week is over. I was getting tired of it anyway. When I took my dogs out for their last walk last night, I couldnt help but feel we had gone back a few months in time. It felt more like November, cusp of winter than it did the razor's edge of summer.

My wife is still confused by the 30+ degree differences between day and night. She's from Florida - they dont swing nearly as much, plus - by this time of year - highs were allready ticking north to 90.

Im from NY, I know how Mama Nature can mess with your head. I remember late season snow all the way into mid-April.

I was born on the hottest day of the year in 1975, in the middle of a stifling heatwave. And if you've ever been to NYC in a heatwave, you know its downright evil. Nothing moves, there is no breeze. Just heat, and humidity, and exhaust, and the smell of every person in a 5 mile radius sweating profusely. Schools up there are not air conditioned, not even equipped with fans. We did not get out of school till the 3rd week of June, so an early heat wave crushed us flat.

You dont get a bus to school unless you live more than a mile from the school itself. So we all would trudge from our homes to school, arriving sweaty and awful. Then at some point, they attempted phys ed. Never worked in weather like that.

The smart ones could con their parents into driving them, the half-smart ones had bikes. Then you had the shlubs like us. Our parents went the opposite direction to get to work, and usually had to leave either the same time, or 5 minutes before. So we walked, in all weather. I never really rode a bus to school except for 1 year. I went to a Catholic school, and it was about 5 towns over - so I had to take a bus. It was ok. But being bussed every day of my school going life? I guess when thats the way things are done, you get used to it.

Im hoping to have a house near enough the school that I dont have to worry about them taking a bus. Boot em out the door in the morning. I used to enjoy my walks to and from, I had my walkman on (they'll probably never know what that is), crankin tapes or the local rock station.

Stopping at the candy store on the way home for a fountain coke and some gum. Then as I got older, stopping at the new 7-11 next to the old candy store for a cup of coffee on the way to school. The old candy store was an ice cream place last time I saw it, probably closed too. We have been through 6 locally owned ice cream parlors in the time I was living there.

Seeing those I was friends with on the walks, avoiding those who seems to have mental problems I knew. Walking in a cool mist, on a foggy gray day in the fall. Theres something no kid should ever NOT have the experience of.

I dont truck with these soccer moms carting the kids hither and thither. We played soccer, baseball, stoopball, football, et. al. in the street. We did not need a league, coaches, or refs. Thats what the older kids were for. And if the road was too busy, we moved the game to a road where one of the other kids lived. One that wasnt busy.

We always whined about staying out after dark, and we were always called in for dinner. My friends mother developed a whistle that carried for blocks, it was early pager technology. And in the summer, we would sit on the stoop (our front stairs - I realize stoop is a regional word) at night and just talk endlessly. Or walk up and down our dead end street, maybe play a game of manhunt.

Summer brings back memories, but never cool ones. In NY, when the heat sets in with humidity - your done for. There are no predictable afternoon showers to cool, there is no breeze which provides some relief.
Its just a solid wall of heat, stink, and wet. But that teaches you more about survival than all the air conditioning in the world.

I dont mind the heat, its the humidity I always hated. It would get thick for days, endless thick.

anyway - enough rambling.