Falling Ahead
We’re into that time of year that instills a sense of dread in any reasonable person of school age, from elementary school through college. I say “reasonable” person, because I’ve known a few individuals who actually liked going to school. I managed to escape the feeling in college, for the most part, because I attended evening classes and generally continued on through the summers.
During my youth, I started cringing right around this time of the summer season, knowing that sometime soon, the lifeguards would blow their whistles, signaling “everybody out of the ocean.” Back in ancient times, it happened on Labor Day, but somewhere along the way, shrewd businessmen somehow figured out how to squeeze quite a bit more juice out of the grapes. It started with the senior citizen bus excursions, back in the 70’s, and next thing you know, everybody wanted in on the extended season.
I could always “feel” the end of the summer approaching, when the blazing heat of late July and early August gave way to a slight crispness in the air, and the shadows started losing their hazy vagueness.
Actually, my initial sense of dread started around July 4th, because it always came up more quickly than I expected, and I could visualize August looming on the horizon, much like a thunderhead on an incoming storm.
But August was the real thing! Just slightly more than four weeks to Labor Day, and the end of my parole! Those stupid back-to-school ads popped up everywhere, as if I needed a reminder! The herds of vacationers diminished a bit in size, as if many of them had already written off the season.
Some of them actually did write it off early, and headed back to wherever they came from to “get ready” for school. Like, who needs a couple of weeks to get ready for school? Fifteen minutes seemed more than adequate to me!
On the amusement pier where I worked, every few days, someone would make the rounds, bidding their farewells for the year. Some would be back the next, but some disappeared from the scene forever.
I disappeared almost forever in ‘67, when I entered the Navy. My last year working on the pier was ‘66, but I still visited during the following summer, before leaving for Great Lakes the third week in August.
I returned in ‘71, and in just four years, the new regime had already infiltrated the ranks. The kids who used to run errands for us were now working the jobs we no longer wanted, but fondly remembered.
I hung around South Jersey until ‘81, and lived in the South until returning in late 2002. They say you can’t go home again. Actually, you can. Just prepare yourself for the fact that somebody pretty much screwed it up while you were gone.