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Summer Lights

March 13, 2016 By pia

There’s a movement to get Daylight Savings Times rescinded. Daylight Savings Time!

Who doesn’t remember being a kid, and feeling like you’re being rewarded, for a hard year of elementary school, with extra time at the beach, the pool, your friends, and even your parents?

Who wasn’t allowed to stay out after dark so you could catch fireflies? And you felt that you were pulling something over on your parents because when the sun doesn’t go down until nineish somehow you were allowed to stay out until Midnight–or so it seemed.

Those same parents who spent all year doing errands, being serious, and making sure your homework was done properly, now smile more, and take you out for ice cream sundaes and coke——foods maybe never allowed in your house——after you spent extra time at the beach.

Even when I was twelve, and valued sleep over just about anything, I never minded giving up sleep the week of the time change because I knew what was coming.

Freedom and fun.

Summer music was different than year round music. Punchier. Hopeful.

As an adult I feel the same way. Summer is my reward. In summer the humidity beats down and every joint in my body feels relaxed; as if I have had a massage. (I know, weird reaction, but I don’t try to understand.)

In summer I can stay at the beach longer.

Here’s where it gets a bit weirder.

I live at the beach in South Carolina, and I love it. It has all the essentials for a great beach plus more. The beach is long and sandy. The waves spew salt, and that special smell, so great for the body, that is lacking the rest of the year.

Near my house there are clubs that blast great beach music. I love it because it solves the “I don’t want to bring headphones because I want to listen to the waves all day” problem. Problem because it’s true but….beaches go with rock, R&B, dance music (not rap–personal thing for the beach.)

We even have the most adorable amusement park. A carnival really as the rides and attractions are put down the week before Memorial Day, and taken down exactly on Labor Day. Exactly!

But I’m from Long Island, and I miss the beaches I grew up with. I would get to Jones Beach early and stay until late and watch the different ethnic groups come and go. When I wasn’t taking a ten to more mile walk. (In the immortal words of my BFF: “Going to the beach with Pia is like going alone. Except when I came back and we’d open the flask, and smoke something that’s now more socially acceptable than cigarettes but wasn’t then.)

On my walks I would pass every Jones Beach sub beach, from family beaches to what we called “D” beach or the nude beach to the Gay beach to singles of all stripes. And when nature called there were bathhouses and/or sorta food courts with bathrooms.

Jones Beach has the largest collection of outdoor showers I have ever seen. I always assumed that I would be an old lady showering in one.

Then there’s Main Street Beach in East Hampton and all the other beautiful Hampton beaches. The bay beaches where swimming is easy. And Montauk, oh Montauk; so different than the rest of the Hamptons. So different than the rest of America. Vast. Windswept. Wildish. Wonderful. Montauk was the last place on Long Island to be discovered. Is that when I knew I had to leave?

There’s Long Beach that I never liked because unlike Jones Beach you can see too many buildings from the beach. But it’s so much easier to get to by public transport.

Get rid of DST, and a good part of the fun would be taken away.

We’re not all morning people. Even when I get up early I like to take it slowly. That’s considered to be major sloth now. Us people who prefer staying up late are told we’re not as productive, risk dementia and other diseases of old age (I’m risking so many I no longer care––that’s what happens when the warnings are overdone.)

But we people who love DST, the beach at sunset,  mountains at sunset, lakes at sunset, life at sunset and after have something people who don’t want an extra hour or so of sun at night don’t have.

We have an unfailing belief that summer is the season of fun.

If you’re going to get rid of DST wait until I’m gone. Please!

And in the very immortal words of my mother; “Always take a sweater. The night air….”

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About Me

I live in the South, not South Florida, a few blocks from the ocean, and two blocks from the main street. It's called Main Street. Amazes me too.

I'm from New York. I mostly lived in the Mid-Upper East Side, and the heart of the Upper West Side. It amazes me when people talk about how scared they were of Times Square in the 1970's and 1980's.

As my mother said: "know the streets, look out and you'll be fine."

What was scary was the invasion of the crack dens into "good buildings in good 'hoods." And the greedy landlords who did everything they could to get good tenants out of buildings.

I'm a Long Island girl, and proud of it now.
Then I hated everything about the suburbs. Yet somehow I lived in a few great Long Island Sound towns after high school.

Go to archives "August 2004" if you want to begin with the first posts.

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