S
In West Lebanon, any stiff breeze threatens to conjure dust squalls until the street sweepers intervene. Cars are so wan and grubby on Main Street they look like a convoy of the damned.
On my regular walk over the bridges to and through White River Junction and back, snow melt uncovers a single lost work glove, empty packs of Marlboros, tossed coffee cups, random bits fallen off cars and trucks — some that surprise me, such as a tire on a rusted rim. Did a spare bounce out of the back of a truck? Or did someone limp home on three wheels?
Always on the lookout for irony, I am rewarded when I see foam cups — large, naturally, poking out of snowbanks. It’s Polar Pop. Perfect.
I don’t know if Bud Lite is the Official Beer of People Who Throw Empties From Their Vehicles, but it’s a contender. I’ve yet to see a craft beer can or bottle.
Should readers organize a GoFundMe campaign and send me posthaste to someplace warm and cheery? No, I am embracing the drabness. I am just getting started.
Spring arrives with morning breath, in a stupor, good for nothing for days or weeks. The Easter Bunny could hide his goodies in road-salted clumps of leaves and lumps of lawn mangled by snowplows.
The days go through meteorological mood swings — a pleasant hour or two followed by vicious squalls and a cold front direct from Thunder Bay. The other day in the market I saw a man in shorts and T-shirt and others in heavy winter coats with their hoods tied tight. We suffer from severe seasonal fashion disorder.
Although I am not a Better Homes and Gardens sort of guy with impossible standards, the decrepitude of my lawn in early spring is shocking. It is depressed, forlorn, brown and mushy. Most of the perennials look not just asleep, but dead. The euonymus japonicus bushes, which have proved hardy enough for our winters, have been denuded by deer, who raid at night in clear violation of the zoning code. They should know they are restricted to Lebanon’s Rural Lands One, Two or Three.
Still, we are born suckers for spring. An hour of sunshine and 42-degree temps and we forgive three weeks of clouds and impertinent nor’easters. “Isn’t this great?” gush people I meet on the sidewalks, and I agree, rather than start trouble with someone who has been shut up all winter and has a smile that looks forced and possibly manic. It’s a day they’d spit out in June, but in March, they drink deeply.
When my kids were little, we got them outside plenty in winter for sledding and skiing. Open gym at the old Seminary Hill School was a refuge on Saturday afternoons as winter moved along, but the program ended just as the snow was failing and the great outdoors became a soggy sponge.
With lawns still unavailable, my son would ask me to toss a baseball in the street. We’d rummage in the basement for gloves and a ball, and head out pleased with ourselves — spring, baseball and all that. But one bad throw, one bad hop, and the ball would skitter down the street like a cold-seeking missile until it found a half-frozen puddle. The soaked hardball instantly turned fingers on the throwing hand achy and red. I would want to keep going because, well, hope springs eternal and we had not tossed a baseball for six months or more. “Forget it, dad,” my son said, sagely.
These days, I feel restless for a couple of weeks during this transitional season. Men of my age may start finding themselves making surprising shifts in their interests, such as reading about obscure military battles, listening alone to shortwave radio or, in extreme cases, taking up taxidermy. I find myself looking at listings for a new car, when new floor mats are all we need. Should I study vegan cooking? Join the Peace Corps? Hop a freight train?
Green summer is the cure, of course. It is the Upper Valley’s perfect visitor, one you wish would never leave. It won’t be here before you know it, but it always comes in the nick of time.
Dan Mackie can be reached at dan.mackie@yahoo.com.
