Menu
Swampland
Is it me getting less patient with uncomfortable weather or have we had an unusually long run of hot and/or swampy days in the valley? A news feature on TV this week reported on bats being hyper-active because of the extended stretch of hot days. I had a deja vu experience one morning this week when the general atmosphere took me back to a summer day as a kid in Dracut roaming the fields and woods at the far end of Hildreth Street. The air felt the same and tripped some kind of memory node. Maybe because I was outside so much in the summer as a kid my recollection of the summers as really hot is so vivid. Air conditioning was not a reference point. The town was still countrified in those days, which probably explains why I recall so many more cicadas in those days. We called that insect “the heat bug.” All of a sudden the air would be split by a long electric buzz. I’ve heard the sound a few times in our tree-filled back yard. But, about the weather, when did Lowell become Louisiana?
Lowell is becoming Louisiana. All we need is some gators in the Merrimack. My wife is starting to say that she likes the winter more than the summer now. (I do the shoveling). Lyle Lovett quoted a friend of his down in Houston the other night, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humanity.” May be time to emigrate to Saskatchiwan.
While on a trip to the Black Hill in S.D. I was in Custer,S.D. they told me that they killed a cat(mountain lion) the other day in their downtown. They said there were three cats killed in the area that week. The residents seem to think the hot weather had brought the cats down from the mountains. I waiting for a cat to walk through downtown Lowell any day now.
Paul, I would bet that if there was a study of the weather temp. this summer and past summers in the mid west and the west in the last ten years. Eight of the ten years would be above average.