Summer in the City

Hot town, summer in the city

Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty

Been down, isn't it a pity

Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half dead

Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head.

Good morning everyone.  It's another scorcher here in the city.  It's been one hot and humid day after another.  They say it is not a heat wave until we have 3 consecutive days of 90 degrees or more, but personally, an 85 degree humid day doesn't seem much different than a 95 degree day.  It's still pretty darned hot. And as anyone who lives or works in the city knows, it's hotter in the concrete jungle than in the surrounding urban areas.  Dark colored roofs and asphalt pavement, concrete, along with fewer shrubs and trees to shade the buildings are some of the major factors contributing to unrelenting heat of summer in the city. That old Loving Spoonful song "Summer in the City" pretty much says it all.  Women are fanning themselves; tempers are beginning to flare. It's pretty dreadful here in the concrete jungle.

There was a time that it didn't bother me.  Summers in the city were different a few years ago.  Didn't seem as hot. Is it that I am getting older, or are the summers getting hotter...more humid?  Last year didn't seem so bad, but maybe that's only the way I am remembering it and not the way it really was.  I feel blessed, though.  Brooklyn has its trees and greenery.  The Mother Ocean is not far from me.  I have my back yard where I can sit in the cool of the evenings...the lightning bugs flashing all about me...relax...commune with nature...remember when this was the way it always was...grass under my feet, trees blowing in the wind...I can dream...hope...imagine...remember...

...those long, hazy summer days that seemed to go on forever....childhood...sitting in the grass, feeling the warm breeze.  The blazing heat of the summer sun did not feel so bad then.  Some part of me wishes I was still a child...no cares...no worries...playing from dawn til eve...chocolate malts from the local Dairy Queen...hours of playing tag, hide-n-seek, and playing ball...bike riding.  Yes, summer was different then.  It was a different time and place.  

I wonder about summers for kids these days.  Are there kids who still have the wonderful summer days that we enjoyed?  Or, has technology taken over their lives.  Is the only baseball game they ever play the one they play on their computers or their PlayStation?  What about swimming?  The city is going broke; city pools are being shut down.  Will the bathtub be the place to swim?  What of the future?  What will that bring?  What about the children of tomorrow?  As the population continues to explode and more and more of the earth is destroyed for urban living, what does the future bring?  What can the generations to come hope for? 

"How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life?"

--Charles A Lindberg, Reader's Digest, November 1939--

Is that what the future brings?

Thanks for letting me share.