Welcome To Summer

The sky is dark with clouds and rain is pelting down, soaking the unwary who thought that bright sunlight would be here all day. A streak of lightning zigzags down in an instant followed by the thunder, Hello! There's electricity in the air; power all around.

Welcome to summer.

I know; technically it's still spring. The turn of the season doesn't happen until our anniversary, two weeks and a couple days away.

The wind's picking up. It reminds of late summer afternoons on the circus when the canvas boss would peer at approaching stormclouds and mutter that very phrase: The wind's picking up. Far more dangerous than mere rain, the wind could blow down a big top and send a show to muddy ruin. So the workin' men would tighten down the lines, four pulling on the ropes while the fifth took up the slack, making the canvas tent as tight and aerodynamic as they possibly could, hoping that the wind would blow over and around instead of in and up.

If the storm looked especially bad or the wind was really strong, they might take drastic action and peak the top, or lower the highest points of the tent -- the peaks -- until they were even with the sidewall to try to prevent the wind from getting up high in the tent and picking it up like a crumpled piece of paper.

I was never in a blowdown, thank God. I came close one night, when the wind was so bad during teardown that the quarter poles were jumping up and down, a foot off the ground, and the big top was hanging on to the stakes for dear life. I was petrified, certain that a pole was going to tear loose from its mooring and take me with it.

All part of mud show life. As we liked to say, "Circus? Yeah, it's a hell of a life!"