Gone are the days of June

It seems hard to believe that June has flown by. I was just in San Diego and Los Angeles at the end of last month it would seem and now, after having just returned from Washington, D.C. for the AJPA conference, I look back and question where all the time went. June is no longer "busting out all over," as Rodgers and Hammerstein would have us sing. It has burst and it is waning with scant hours remaining before the entrance of sizzling July. For those of us who remember the lure and charm of the summer, June has always been a special month. It was hot, but not nearly as oppressively hot as July or August. I think back on my days at Camp Blue Star in Hendersonville, North Carolina. During the first few nights in June, the temperature in the Blue Ridge Mountains would plunge into the 50s, quite chilly for a native New Orleanian. I would spend many a night shivering in my bunk bed, thinking about warm things and wondering why I couldn't have one more blanket. However, if the truth be known, I loved the hearty weather. I grew to love the few cold days New Orleans afforded me. There were those miserable, overly humid days that were not nearly as much fun when the mercury plummeted into the teens or 20s. My days in Cleveland following the Hurricane Katrina disaster were also quite pleasant and my first winter there turned out to be quite mild by Cleveland standards. The second winter of 2006-2007 was considered "normal," by most Clevelanders and that one nearly broke my penchant for cold forever, but to be accurate it wasn't the cold. It was the snow. Brrrrrrr. That's how I deal with the oppressive heat and high humidity of a typical New Orleans summer. I think about the Cleveland winter and I reckon it's not nearly so bad.