August and Everything After

One thing I will never get used to living in the tropics...the onset of fall/autumn/winter. Today was 93 degrees with humidity at about 90%, I came out of my local supermarket and passed the window of the Dollar store. The Manager was arranging scarecrows and colored leaves on the display board. In the rest of the country, August is the last of the dog days of summer, but here we are just at our hottest...it couldn't feel less like fall if it tried. ~sigh~

I'm a Jersey girl and frankly I miss the change of seasons..I miss shopping for boots and sweaters. I miss the smell of fallen leaves in piles and the cool crisp nights of October, my birth month.

When I was a kid, by mid August you just knew that the summer was almost over..we didn't go back to school until the week after labor day. Here they go back 2 weeks before Labor day and in some places even earlier. In August you held on to each day knowing that it would soon be cool..you'd be back at school, so we lingered a little longer at the pool..or the beach or the lake. We saw the scarecrows in the windows and we'd groan knowing we'd have to go to school, but there was an excitement to it too. New clothes, new school supplies. I loved getting a new notebook (blue canvas ring binder), it was a clean new palate just waiting for writings & Drawings in blue bic pen ink. The smell of new paper and books. I still love the smell of a new book...I always smell the inside when I buy one. Book covers, you could buy them at the 5&10 for about a dime each, or you took some of Mom's brown grocery bags and made the folds then slipped right on your school book. We'd get fined if our books weren't covered. I don't think kids get books anymore..my daughters school had a classroom set they used in class and they took home work sheets for homework or had work books. Kids MUST still get school books...mustn't they?

In any case..I am waxing nostalgic..it must have been the scarecrows today.