Smiles of a Summer Night (Sorta)

Another summer’s end, and another great unknown ahead.

I hate the end of summer.

That’s because­ — simple math — I love summer. Like the song goes, it’s my time of year. Part of it is just me, part of it is being a water sports guy (ha ha, I know), part of it is the seasonal scaries that so many of us have as the grind of regular life beckons with the falling leaves and falling temperatures.

I am also of the feral child generation, when summer meant unstructured and nearly unrestricted freedom of a sort that these days would get Child Protective Services called on you. That’s a kind of muscle memory that never goes away, which is why for many of us it will always be associated with the season. Atop all that, I was an Army brat, and moved almost every May, so fall meant starting over yet again in yet another new school, which wasn’t exactly super fun, but built character, as they say. (Don’t get me started on “New Kid in Town,” and not just because it’s an Eagles song, but because it’s written from the perspective of a local kid moaning woe-is-me over the eponymous new arrival, who, in the narrator’s telling, is an instant hero. Gimme a fucking break.)

But I digress.

Three years ago in these pages I wrote a piece called “Summer’s End” in which I covered a lot of that same ground, but…