Indeed it was a relief to drive in leisurely fashion around and around the roundabout on Tumbleweed Tuesday, reveling in the fact that “they” were gone, at least for a few days. I was run in on a charge of ADIEU, Aimless Driving in Euphoria Unparalleled, a violation, but was let off with time served after my employer testified in asking for leniency that I’d been here all summer.
The partying was incessant in our neighborhood over Labor Day weekend, the worst ever. I phoned the police department Sunday night to complain of the racket, but they said they could do nothing about tree crickets.
People asked me how I liked the horse show, and I told them it was all right in small doses. This year, Mario Deslauriers bested his daughter, Lucy, in the jump-off. I thought better, though, of the first thing that occurred to me as the story’s headline: “Father Beats Daughter at Classic.”
Jon Diat’s story about the intricacies of picking out a tennis racket, which he wrote while at the U.S. Open, had me thinking of “String Theory, Framers Hot Topics at Open” or “Big Question: Will Fed Ease or Tighten?” — Fed being Roger Federer — but jettisoned them as being too obscure.
It is fun to be obscure — somebody once said it was a sign of genius — though the line must be drawn somewhere, especially if you’re in a profession that advocates plain, unadorned speech, as in this week’s police blotter entry, which all the local newspapers picked up: “A Springs resident who declined to give his name complained at 9:15 p.m. Sunday of tree crickets. Subject said they were rubbing their wings loudly, were very annoying, and that this wasn’t the first time he had called. Subject told to sit tight, that an ambulance was on its way.”
The summer here was almost overwhelming. Especially given the fact that our estate, Downturn Abbey, was selected by the house tour committee as a prime example of pillar-to-post postindustrial regionalism, the bashed-in mailbox lending it just the right touch, they said. There were even times during the past 16 weeks when I could barely breathe, which is why I and the guys I play with at the tennis club are called hackers, I guess.
When we stopped by BookHampton this afternoon to buy a copy of “The Grammarians,” they told O’en, to whom they’d given a treat, that he was “such a good boy.”
“How come he never says that about me?” I said. “Whenever I ask him if I’m a good boy, he gives me this dubious look, as if I ought to know better, and then he adds — get this — “to whom much is given much is required in the way of treats.” I tell ya, it’s been a hell of a summer. I think I’ll go drive around and around the roundabout again.