Posts Tagged ‘hot’

31
May

Does Summer Have To Wait Until Memorial Day?

   Posted by: Michael Bernier   in Today's Reality

Today is Memorial Day, the holiday where we remember and honor those who have served in the armed forces of our country and made the ultimate sacrifice. I don’t know about you, but I tend to choke up and get teary-eyed when I think about how those soldiers, sailors, and airmen gave their lives to defend the liberty and freedoms we so often take for granted. I give grateful and humble thanks to those families who have lost loved ones.

Many towns across America have parades in which bands play patriotic tunes, and local veterans dress in their uniforms and march down the parade route or ride in vintage military vehicles. My older son marched with his high school band in our town’s parade today, just as his sister did in years past, and next year his younger brother will join him (he’ll be an upcoming freshmen, and they are required to participate in the parade).

Many families get together and celebrate the day, usually with a cookout. Our family is no exception; the dinner menu today is grilled hamburgers, hot dogs, and bratwursts with all the trimmings, as well as baked beans and potato salad. I’m the one who works the grill, as most of the husbands/fathers do for cookouts, and usually I prepare much more than we can eat at one sitting. Our plan for tomorrow’s dinner is to simply have today’s leftovers, and we’ll pick at the rest of it for the remainder of the coming week. Nothing will be wasted; our sons will see to that!

Another significance of today is that (at least here in the U.S.) it marks the unofficial start of the summer season. Temperatures starting in late May are typically warming up to summer levels, which for our area means highs in the 90s and lows in the 70s. This year, though, we’ve had those temperatures with us for almost the entire month of May. We could have declared the start of summer three weeks ago! I’m sure the same could be said for the end of summer as well; it’s usually very warm here on Labor Day in September, and we could probably have another two or three weeks of summer after that before the temperatures start to cool down. When you add those up, that’s an extra month and a half of summer! It sounds great at first, but I’m not sure everyone would be happy with a longer summer. Would you?

I don’t think I would mind. It would give us more time for having summer cookouts!