Falling for Chicago

A cool front came through here the other day. I could feel it when I took the dogs out that evening. The breeze was a nice northerly, the humidity had dropped to just under fifty percent, and the temperature had dropped about two degrees below the eighty five it had been the night before. If my mom had been here she would have said, "Oh, it's so humid and hot. How can you stand it living here?" You say potāto, I say potăto. You say it's hotter than Rosie O'Donnell's armpits, I say it's not nearly as miserable as yesterday.

I was looking at the weather up in Chicago over the weekend and it made me nostalgic. I must admit that I miss the crisp fall weather with the crystal clear blue skies. They say you can never go back home, meaning back to the home you remember in your youth. That is probably very true. On most cool fall Saturdays, when I was a kid, fathers would rake up the leaves in the front yard and pile them along the curb. Then just before they went into the house to watch hours of football, they would strike a match and burn those leaves. I loved the smoky, yet pleasant aroma of smoldering leaves. I miss it, but even if I lived up north, because of air pollution, I wouldn't be allowed to do that. I miss the burning leaves so much that sometimes when the weather finally cools down here in Florida, around January, I rake up a few leaves from around my live oak, and burn them on Mark's backyard grill.

I'll continue to watch the weather on WGN, and check the internet throughout autumn to see how lovely it is up in Chicago. I have to, because I don't want to miss that moment when it all goes to shit, turns into snow and sleet, and drops to ten below zero. That's when I'll be happy about living here in Florida.