Summer's here, officially, and the time is right for ... cocooning in air-conditioned comfort until October.
Transplants from temperate climes will never learn to love the Vegas summer. Oh, sure, it's swell to gloat about sipping tea on the patio while your friends are shoveling away an avalanche in Pittsburgh or skidding off Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. But when you grew up savoring "those lazy, hazy, crazy days," you just can't accept the idea that it is not merely unpleasant but downright dangerous to go outside in late June. Nice thought, but those "O-liminate Ozone" ads just aren't helping.
Stuff You Should Read! |
Maybe there's more to this crazy notion of Nevada as an early primary state than anyone cares to admit. This week Washington Post political blogger Chris Cillizza quizzed ace Nevada political reporter Jon Ralston on the state's readiness for "presidential primetime." Cillizza writes: "If Nevada's caucus date is moved up, Ralston will join two other reporters—David Yepsen of the Des Moines Register and John DiStaso of the Manchester Union Leader—as holding a very special vantage point when it comes to covering the 2008 nominating contest." Might be fun to see Ralston train his brainpower—and considerable snark—on presidential candidates. Check out the story online at |
Our first summer here, my wife and I went to a matinee movie and emerged from the frosty gloom to an asphalt platter of broiling automobiles, certain that one of them was ours but lacking any sense of how to find or identify it. We were literally dumbfounded. Worse, I could not remember anything, including my name and where I lived. For some reason, the latter troubled me more, perhaps because shelter seemed more crucial than identity at the moment. I had to retreat to a shadow for a moment to pull facts into focus.
Oh, get real, I hear you native Southwesterners groaning, so it's hot a quarter of the year. This is why God made misters, pools and beer. And having lived in Orlando, I will grant that 105 degrees and 15 percent humidity beats 95 and 70 any day.
Still, the summer solstice always induces a wave of nostalgia that intensifies each year. Sometimes I awaken in our hermetically sealed life-sustaining unit and remember the light whirr of a revolving fan and the thin clinking of curtain rings, like ice cubes in a glass of iced tea, as a breeze sucks the drapes to the window screens. Standing at the kitchen sink with my dad, listening to crickets as we spit watermelon seeds into the sink. Riding my bike down to the Moore Park pool in Pittsburgh, the clammy aroma of sweat and chlorine in the dressing room, the wire basket handed to an attendant in exchange for a metal token I'd affix to my trunks with the safety pin my mom had attached for that purpose.
Or later, all growed up, sitting shirtless by the open bay window of my apartment in Chicago, sipping a lukewarm Old Style, half-assedly reading in the courtyard din of tinny music and televisions; deciding oh, hell, and walking over to the lake to sit on a rock.
And so on. I know, you natives will tell me summer here has its pleasures; that you grew up with the windows open at night, too; it's just what you're used to. And it is. But having tasted the sweet, sticky joy of the temperate summer, I'll never get used to the idea of the season as a 90-day sentence.