A Silent Fall

 

Come September, you wake up one morning to a bracing chill in the air, you look at the time and realize the sun is sleeping later and later every day; you thrill to the promise that our muggy, buggy Southern Summer is gathering its mosquito foot soldiers and its hurricane storm troops and preparing to migrate to the far hemisphere. Fall, the glorious season, with its coat of many colors, the payoff for surviving the dog days of August, whispers “soon, soon,” with every breeze. But the sounds of September are silent this year. The morning grinding of school buses up and down the streets is eerily missing. Missing too, the bustle and commotion of thousands of college students flocking back to summer-sleepy campuses, standing in line with overflowing carts at checkouts in supermarkets and home goods stores, and cramming every restaurant table or bar stool up and down the downtown strip. Fall, the real season of renewal, when our town is jolted back to life. It is eerily silent this year.