69 bar rises 29.80 0mph NNW dew-point 57 Summer night
Last Quarter of the Flower Moon
A soft summer night has fallen. As age piles on, the magic of summer nights seems to disappear, like the Other World of the Celts disappeared long ago from this world. As a boy, there was always hide and seek, army, watching and catching fireflys, sitting on the steps of other kids in our kid dense neighborhood on Monroe Street. The night time in those days did not end the day’s play; it provided another arena, one of darkness and stealth.
Hiding behind bushes, creeping along on your belly to get close enough to run and kick the can before being tagged, those games got an increased intensity at night. Play like that has vanished it seems, occluded by the television, the computer and busy schedules, even in the summer.
I had no schedule in the summer, no music lessons, no sports leagues, no advanced this or that. Instead I would get up and consider how to spend the day. Would we go the field and build on our fort? Ride bicycles down the hill by the Meyer’s house? Maybe baseball over at the Carver’s? We might get a wagon and collect pop bottles, take them downtown to Cox’s supermarket and redeem them for ice cream or comic book money. We swam at Beulah Park pool. In the afternoon around 3pm I would deliver my paper route. Go to the library. Read at home.
As a teen-ager with a driver’s license, the night opened up even more possibilities. There were dances in towns all around Alexandria, dances that happened each week on the same night, so we could go every night except Sunday and sometimes did. Our dances were at the National Guard Armory, I don’t recall the night. My friend Richard Lawson and I would get in the car and go somewhere the nights we didn’t work.
Richard died several years ago of wounds suffered in Vietnam.
Astronomy brings back the magic of the night. I went into that world for a couple of years, but over time it lost its appeal; still, I loved it for giving me back the night.
It’s time for me to reclaim the night, the childhood magic and wonder. It has become clearer and clearer to me that the secret to life is to retain as close a contact with the awe and marvel of childhood as possible. For to them belong the realm of the sacred.