The passing of Memorial Day has come to be accepted as the beginning of summer, although officially the season does not arrive until the summer solstice on June 21. Likewise, the bookend Labor Day holiday (Sept. 4) precedes the autumnal solstice and the official end of summer and beginning of fall (Sept. 23).
Most of us don’t get too hung up on these official beginnings and endings of the seasons. We recognize the change of seasons by feel. As Mark Twain once quipped, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”
Summer is a favorite among writers, poets and those with a weakness for nostalgia.
“Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language,” wrote novelist Henry James.
“The summer night is like a perfection of thought,” poet Wallace Stevens proclaimed.
James spent most of his life in New York. Stevens lived almost his entire life in Connecticut.
As a rule, you won’t catch Southern writers and poets lavishing that sort of praise on summer. It’s too hot in the day and at night there are the mosquitoes that have to be accounted for.
So non-Southern writers and poets may write of lying on the cool grass on a June afternoon or a night-time stroll through scented gardens, but here in the South if you find somebody lying on the grass on a June morning, you should probably call 9-1-1. A summer night spent outdoors is like treating yourself to an extended acupuncture session.
In the South, pleasant thoughts of summer are not real-time observations. Rather, we associate summer with our youth, a time when our brains were not fully formed. That allowed us to be easily amused and less cognizant of the atmosphere. We were, most of us, feral.
Having said all that, summer suits a lot of us because we have reached the age where we are well aware of our limitations, our flaws and failings. We aren’t out to change the world so much as survive it, and nothing makes a realist of someone faster than a Southern summer.
Summer doesn’t prevent us from doing things, but it does make us think twice about it. It puts a check on ambition. It’s the time of year when you most often hear the phase, “That’ll do.”
The boundless enthusiasm spent on planting flowers and vegetables in Pleasant Spring has its reckoning in Sultry Summer with the realization that twice as much ain’t twice as good. In that way, the romanticist of the spring becomes the pragmatist of summer.
Recently, the online fitness site TotalShape.com analyzed a study from America’s Health Rankings and concluded that Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas are the nation’s three laziest states. This should not be surprising when you consider what they have in common: Southern summers.
A Southern Summer is simply no time for the go-getters of the world. It favors the tortoise, not the hare. It brings the sprinters back to the pack and clouds the distinction between the achievers and the idlers.
In the summer, we can tell ourselves we aren’t being slow: We are being deliberate, judicious, intentional.
Summer in the South is the time of year when you see a dog chasing a cat and they are both walking.
Best advice? Take it easy.
It’s going to be a long, hot summer.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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