THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 3, 1995 TAG: 9511010252
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Over Easy
SOURCE: Jo-Ann Clegg
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
Excuse me, but is there anyone out there who can tell me what happened to May, June, July, August, September and October?
The last time I took time to check the calendar it was April and I was rushing to get my impatiens planted before the heat set in.
The next thing I knew some kid in a Power Ranger outfit was ringing my doorbell and demanding Reese's Pieces.
Right now I don't dare blink for fear I'll miss Christmas.
When did the world start spinning so fast? When did we switch from Eastern Standard Time to Daylight Saving Time and back again? How did the Braves make it to the World Series?
The last time I checked they were still the joke of New England, a pale team of cellar dwellers compared to the supermen in the crimson socks who livened summer afternoons at Fenway Park, just an MTA ride away.
In case you're wondering what that's all about, let me explain that before Atlanta and before Milwaukee, the Braves did, indeed, play in Boston.
Badly, to be sure, but play they did. That was only a couple of years ago, I'd say.
My World Almanac disagrees. It says the Braves left Bean Town more than 40 years ago, that it's been nearly 30 since they moved to Atlanta.
Which, I guess, is why the months of May through October disappeared this year. Time has just plain sped up over the last few decades.
I think it has something to do with both the demise of the front porch and the advent of washers, dryers, air conditioning and nine-month basketball seasons.
We used to have seasonal markers to guide us as we made our way through the year. They don't exist anymore.
My grandmother knew it was time to prepare for winter when a thin layer of ice formed in the bottom of the well bucket.
My mother knew winter had arrived when clothespins froze solid to the clothes they were supposed to hold.
I used to know that spring was at hand when diapers came off the clothes line whipped soft by fresh winds and harboring the scent of daffodils and new grass from a hundred neighboring lawns.
My father ticked off the earth's rotation by the sports seasons. Fall was for football, winter for basketball. Spring and summer were devoted to what he considered the greatest sport of all - baseball.
Now football starts in the heat of August and basketball runs from just past Labor Day until just before Memorial Day. Or so it seems.
And then there is the matter of air conditioning.
I wouldn't trade mine for anything, but I'll be the first to admit that it, more than anything else, has been responsible for a world in which days run seamlessly together leaving us without the markers that separate spring from summer, summer from fall.
On a gray day when all the windows in the neighborhood are closed and the temperature in my family room hovers somewhere around the 70 degree mark, I have to do a nature check to know whether it's midsummer or midwinter outside.
If windows all around were open, if grandmothers shelling peas and babies in playpens were visible on the front porches, then it was, indeed, summer and there was still plenty of time to think about things like Halloween costumes and Thanksgiving turkeys.
When the windows were firmly closed, the porch rockers empty and the last crack of a bat had been heard on the parlor radio, we knew for sure that the season had changed and that there was winter work to be done.
It was harder to lose six months out of a calendar year back then.
Almost as hard as it was for those Braves of old to have a winning season, you might say. by CNB