As if on cue, the weather cooled noticeably on the day September began. In the last three days, we have had temperatures as low as the fifties. This morning, it’s in the sixties. But summer doesn’t end until September 22. What’s the hurry?
As noted earlier in this blog, I am a hot-weather person. I got that way during the thirteen years I spent more time in tropical weather of Vietnam than I did in the U.S. I became so acclimated to hot weather that any temperatures below 85 degrees feel downright cold. When the weather is where I want it to be, in the upper eighties and lower nineties, I go shirtless and wear shorts. I have never much liked clothes and always wore as little as possible. I probably would have joined a nudist colony had there been one available to me.
The lowering of the temperatures and the need to add more clothes feels melancholy to me. I associate cold weather with sadness. Winter, to me, is a time of gloom, and I always want to escape back to that place—Vietnam—where it never got cold. Walter Huston captured my feelings well in his “September Song”:
Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December
But the days grow short when you reach September
When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
One hasn’t got time for the waiting game
Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days I’ll spend with you
These precious days I’ll spend with you
Tom Glenn, Writer 