Jon
08-08-2007, 01:41 PM
The following column appeared in print Wednesday.
It’s August.
Usually the year’s quiet pause that brings a lion’s roar of heat and the yearning for the clean crisp air of November or at least the winds of May and June.
This year, however, it came with some cool grayness as a gentle reminder that fall is just around the corner. While other parts of the nation swelter, we can grow restive under a moderate thermometer.
It’s August.
Time for the county fair. Funnel cake, cheap sunglasses, pig races, clown faces, BMX bikers with massive air, rickety rides with their arching metal connected by the will of a transient group of those who likely have seen better days. There will be bad bands and good bandds, local “art,” and a Noah’s Ark of livestock breathing the air of their last days. There will be opportunities to throw a ping pong ball in a floating dish and to shoot out a paper star with a BB rifle to win a Jim Morrison mirror or a large stuffed animal for a nephew or niece. There will be young girls flirting with young boys and young boys flirting with young girls and plenty of children having the time of their lives for a nominal cost to their parents. Did I mention funnel cake?
It’s August.
Usually a time for newspaper editors to panic. “Fill the pages” is the mantra of these days, with politicos taking their annual rites of summer and hitting the road, even the bread-and-butter councils meet a mere once this month. It’s a time when the back end of pencils tip tap on notebooks in the news room and any squeal or squawk from the police scanner turns more heads than it should and the crows spreading their wings outside the window have the sheen of their outer feathers scrutinized unnecessarily. We wonder what happened to the hummingbird. It is a time when reporters think, “Maybe it is time for me to write that feature on adult education.”
It’s August.
Time when the sky seems big and the horizon seems bigger on the western sky as the sun swoops lower than we are normally accustomed. It is a time when the spring wind dies and we usually bake with the earth expecting the coming winter rain. But now, the cool air is sparing us the trip to the local hardware store that ends with the proclamation at the empty space where there was once plenty of air conditioners, “Next year, we will be more prepared.”
It’s August.
The pause before school starts and the November campaigns kick in. It’s time for the county fair to telegraph all that once was right here. And if you think this column is too sentimental or corn dog, then I will take mine with extra mustard. I don’t need you. And this county never did either.
Time to hit the fair. If you don’t want to, I don’t care.
It’s August. One of the best months of the year.
Jon Mays is the editor in chief of the Daily Journal.
It’s August.
Usually the year’s quiet pause that brings a lion’s roar of heat and the yearning for the clean crisp air of November or at least the winds of May and June.
This year, however, it came with some cool grayness as a gentle reminder that fall is just around the corner. While other parts of the nation swelter, we can grow restive under a moderate thermometer.
It’s August.
Time for the county fair. Funnel cake, cheap sunglasses, pig races, clown faces, BMX bikers with massive air, rickety rides with their arching metal connected by the will of a transient group of those who likely have seen better days. There will be bad bands and good bandds, local “art,” and a Noah’s Ark of livestock breathing the air of their last days. There will be opportunities to throw a ping pong ball in a floating dish and to shoot out a paper star with a BB rifle to win a Jim Morrison mirror or a large stuffed animal for a nephew or niece. There will be young girls flirting with young boys and young boys flirting with young girls and plenty of children having the time of their lives for a nominal cost to their parents. Did I mention funnel cake?
It’s August.
Usually a time for newspaper editors to panic. “Fill the pages” is the mantra of these days, with politicos taking their annual rites of summer and hitting the road, even the bread-and-butter councils meet a mere once this month. It’s a time when the back end of pencils tip tap on notebooks in the news room and any squeal or squawk from the police scanner turns more heads than it should and the crows spreading their wings outside the window have the sheen of their outer feathers scrutinized unnecessarily. We wonder what happened to the hummingbird. It is a time when reporters think, “Maybe it is time for me to write that feature on adult education.”
It’s August.
Time when the sky seems big and the horizon seems bigger on the western sky as the sun swoops lower than we are normally accustomed. It is a time when the spring wind dies and we usually bake with the earth expecting the coming winter rain. But now, the cool air is sparing us the trip to the local hardware store that ends with the proclamation at the empty space where there was once plenty of air conditioners, “Next year, we will be more prepared.”
It’s August.
The pause before school starts and the November campaigns kick in. It’s time for the county fair to telegraph all that once was right here. And if you think this column is too sentimental or corn dog, then I will take mine with extra mustard. I don’t need you. And this county never did either.
Time to hit the fair. If you don’t want to, I don’t care.
It’s August. One of the best months of the year.
Jon Mays is the editor in chief of the Daily Journal.