Radio Free Montone: Endless Summer Is A Myth
By John Montone, 1010 WINS
On racks in clothing stores hang coats and flannel shirts. Back-to-school ads are filling fliers and airwaves and sweating 300-pounders are laboring on gridirons. Endless summer is a myth.
I have been listening to the Beach Boys a lot lately. And docking the MOJO the other day I wondered how many more excursions before the marina calls to say it's time pull all boats out of the water. Baseball writers have already made August disappear with their columns on post season odds and match-ups. And I still haven't had an ice cream cone.
Soon big late-summer jelly fish will appear in the rolling waves at the Jersey Shore and, "End of Season," signs will sprout. Beach chairs, umbrellas, straw hats…prices slashed. At least one store will bring out a paper pumpkin. And the ageless beauty, Mary Montone, will begin buying notebooks and magic markers for her fifth grade students. "I'm ready to go back to work," she will say.
This year "endless summer," ends even earlier in one sense. Our funky bay house is coming down. 13 years after I ignored every common sense financial impulse and convinced Mary that what we really needed in our hectic lives was a place of our own on LBI, that good happy home will meet the wrecking ball. We bought it a few months after 9/11, following a fall and winter when sleep was rarely possible and when I began confusing my nightmares and my waking hours. Six months after the attacks I stood on the aging wooden deck of the raised ranch on a damp cold March morning and looked out on the bay. Two martinis later -- maybe three, I made an offer.
Radio Free Montone: Endless Summer Is A Myth
A new house, bigger for sure, will rise on the sandy lot. The deck will be higher allowing us to see even farther out onto the sparkling water. If all goes well we will retire there and wake up each morning to the sound of humming birds and to the smell of the briny.
But this year as all signs and sales point to September, I want to say, "Hold on. Not so fast." The leaves will change colors, they always do. But we can wait for that. The sand is still hot. The days long. Even if "Endless Summer," is a myth, Labor Day just cannot pull into town before I have my ice cream cone.
