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Between Two Seasons
When I was a kid the summer ended when Jerry Lewis sat on a stool and smoked and cried. I got to stay up late to watch the Telethon, and was always amazed when it was still going on after I woke up. I always felt as if I’d missed something, as if they got loose and carefree and messy at 3 AM.
I thought of Jerry Lewis primarily as a telethon host, just as I thought George Gobel had no existence prior to Hollywood Squares, or didn’t know the entire cast of “The Jungle Book” had careers before they voiced their characters. We all come in at the end of something, but we never know it until we look back later.
Summer ends today, and we all know it in our bones. Which is odd, since bones cannot read a calendar. Why, summer goes on for another three weeks! Uh huh. Sure. I guess it’s bred deep from childhood: Labor Day is the last day summer can call its own. After that, no matter how warm, how sunny, how green and sweet, the days belong to Fall, raking in our chips on behalf of the house. The month marches towards the playground graveyard of October, then to the iron gates of Winter. It’s a good season, with all the necessary lessons. But this is Labor Day, summer’s property, and Fall can cool its heels outside while we play.
I always end up at the State Fair the last weekend, for work. (Haven’t gone to the Fair just to be at the Fair for years. The job requires columns, videos, and recently, appearances: I stand on a small stage and hector people into answering questions for prizes.) The day before Labor Day was a perfect day at the Fair, without a hint of what’s to come. There was no end-of-summer mood, no get-it-all-in-before-it’s-over mood. It was a perfect day in our communal Brigadoon.
COVID killed the Fair last year. This year there’s a minor mask request in the barns. Wait a minute, I have to wear a mask in a poorly ventilated room full of flatulent pigs? Forget that! Uh – hold on, let me rethink that. It didn’t kill it in 2021: The streets were filled, like a dry creek bed after a downpour. It was as if nothing had happened.
Except it had. The lack of a mask mandate made the timorous stay away. Attendance was halved, I think. (The Fair after the Thanos snap.) In a way, it made for an easier day: you can get to the Fair by parking in a distant lot and taking a free bus. I park at the U of M, my old alma mater, and for years have known better than to expect an open spot in the free lots on the weekends. You find a meter and hike. But the lots never filled. The buses were full, but not packed. The lines at every wonderful food stand were halved. It was a demonstration of a new world where some will resume life, and some choose to stay home.
On the way to the parking lot I passed all the frats and sororities. It’s pledge week. Parties on every frat lawn. One sorority had all the members out front in cheerleading costumes. All the usual fertility rituals. I always felt divorced from that side of college when I went to the U, but you can’t help but smile, and remember what it was like to be that age, at college, on a perfect day that was all the better for being not yet Fall. On the Minneapolis subreddit I saw people clucking about these parties, predicting the ICU would fill up in two week’s time. You wish, I thought.
Anyway. The Fair ends, the summer ends. The last fireworks crackle and fade. The next day is usually exactly like the one that precedes it. The buildings on the Fairgrounds are still there, after all. But the knowledge that the Fair is going on, even if you’re not there, is something that sustains you in the last ten days of summer, the trailing edge of the green smooth fabric that ran through your hands with such constance you never thought to grab it and make it pause. The day after Labor Day, you know the Fair is over – the friers are cold, the rides knocked down, the Grandstand cleared, the gondolas that crossed the sky taken down and put in the shed. It’s time to get back to work, even though you never really stopped. It’s time to get ready. Fall is our ally right now, our friend, but it will leave our side soon enough. Jerry Lewis has ground out his cigarette, and that means winter is next.
Published in General
Ever hear of the Celtic Cross-Quarter Holidays? They come around May 1st (May Day), August 1st, November 1st (All Saints’ Day), and February 2nd (Candlemas).
Sounds more proposal than theory.
As I understand it, identifiable events were found useful time and again in societies around the planet for decision-making about movements and plantings. Math is hard — observations are easy. The “seasons” as we know them are associated with what we think of as seasonal characteristics (summer is warm), but as discovered through repeated experimentation, the best way to divide the year into unambiguous time periods was by marking observable events. The onset of (say) summer was a proclamation which caused things to happen in the society — hot or not.
It’s a pet peeve of mine, but the idea that fall “officially” begins on the autumnal equinox is a myth. There is no such thing as the official beginning of any of the seasons; they’re not standardized time units like months or years.
There are various technical definitions of the seasons that are used in some scientific fields. For some reason, popular perception has seized upon the astronomical definitions as being the “official” ones, but those definitions have nothing to do with weather. More relevant is the meteorological definitions, which line up pretty well with real-world experience: fall is the months of September, October, and November. (Winter is December, January, and February, and so on.)
Of course, “fall” means something completely different if you’re talking about school semesters. I think most fall semesters start sometime in August.
I’ve pretty much given up on winning this battle, because this silly “official” business is so entrenched that everybody repeats it without questioning it. But meteorological fall started a week ago.
The Equinox Fairy is definitely leaving a stone in your shoe this year.
“nessuno toglierà questa pietra dalla mia scarpa?”
I guess there’s an official season definition and a practical season definition. Here are my personal definitions:
Fall: This season begins with the first college football game. It also coincides with the first time the upstairs AC isn’t on when I get up.
Winter: This starts when it gets cold around here, usually after Thanksgiving. It extends through the SuperBowl and usually into March.
Spring: This season begins when the grass starts to grow.
Summer: Summer begins when schools let out.
It’s really nice to hear about state fairs and pig stalls, telethons and rides – something normal in the middle of such an abnormal world. We always went back to school the day after Labor Day. Now kids go back mid-August when it’s still summer, then after a couple weeks, they get another holiday break, or some break. They seem to have a lot of breaks. We had Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.
You must be right because grocery stores start selling Halloween candy in August.
By that logic winter starts in September, since that’s when the Christmas stuff starts appearing.
All seasons are equal but some seasons are more equal than others.
Doubt if I’ve ever been within 100 miles of a state fair. Jerry Lewis? Never watched the telethon, but loved him on Wiseguy.
Labor Day Weekend was always a sharp demarcation. Early on it meant daily sandlot softball paradise was over, and descent into the lower regions imminent — depending on which Sister Mary Commandant would greet us for the next grade.
Later, Labor Day meant beach volleyball tournaments, phone number squirrelling in the singles group houses, and the sad ferry trip off the island.
During the working years of my four decade L.A. epoch, Labor Day signaled an impending blizzard of hype, hope, much disappointment, some amazement, and judgement by millions. No, not elections. The New Fall Season. Hard to tell today, but not so long ago it was something to look forward to. Frank Costanza wasn’t the only one with a collection.
Summer in Reno is not officially over until the Reno International Air Races and the roar of Merlin engines subside!