Summer's Here

Things are a lot quieter in the neighborhood now that final exams are over at ENMU. My two closest neighbors have packed up and gone home for the summer; I’ll miss ‘em. It’s not that we’re friends or anything, quite the contrary. I know them not at all, and my polite greetings have been returned only perfunctorily and sometimes with visible surprise, as if they’re thinking “Gee, how strange that ol’ guy spoke to me!” So how/why will I miss them if I don’t know them? The visuals, Dear Reader, the visuals. Both are young women in their late teens or early 20s, and right attractive young women they are, too. (I’ve written about one of the neighbors before; alas, it seems that relationship is no more.) When I say things are and will be quieter, it’s not because the neighbor ladies are rowdy, party-all-night college student stereotypes. Nope, it’s simply the noise they make coming and going…one drives a big-ass diesel four-door Chevy pickup, the other has a Ford F-150 pickup. Apparently both trucks only have two speeds: off and on. Their arrivals and departures never go unnoticed, accompanied as they are by flying gravel and roaring motors. Otherwise the two women are pretty quiet. For cowgirls.

Yep, cowgirls. Both my neighbors also have large, fifth-wheel gooseneck horse trailers and horses to go in them. I find this fact somewhat amusing. Go off to college, and take the horse, too. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this, and a lot right with it, actually. I just find it somewhat strange and unusual as I’ve never seen it before. Good for them, and Good On ‘Em, too. Oh, and by the way: both horse and horse trailer don’t live on-prem here in beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Estates, they are kept elsewhere in places unknown to me. But I see them coming and going at various times, mostly on the weekends. Always the same trailer(s), always the same horse(s). I do wonder about the boarding arrangements…

But back to the leaving. The packing up and leaving ritual always seems to be such a frantic activity, from the hurried loading of boxes into the vehicle right down to the full-throttle acceleration away from the ol’ fifth wheel that is the home away from home while in academe. And as for the fifth-wheels: a good idea, that. Both fifth-wheels are older but well-kept RVs that look as if they’ve been in the family for perhaps ten years before being handed off to Susie to use while she’s away at college. Personally, I think the fifth-wheel is better than a dorm room and more private than an apartment (probably cheaper, too). It’s your own space, after all. I’m not sure the fifth-wheel would be as good a choice for a young co-ed in large university towns like Ann Arbor, Madison, or Norman, but it works very well here in P-Town. Quiet, safe, and all that.

And so summer is officially here: the kids are gone.

Summer is also here in another way: it’s heating up. It’ll get to the low 90s today and the WX Channel predicts a solid week of mid-90s weather to follow. Lovely! Grilling season, with the accompanying al fresco beer drinking and cigars in the evening and all that. Arguably the BEST time of year! One of the better aspects of the High Plains climate is our nights are always cool, never warmer than low 60s, no matter how hot it gets during the day. It’s the altitude, 4009 feet above sea-level, to be exact. It’s why we’re called The HIGH Plains.

No politics today, except to say The Anchoress is still in it, despite claiming she was going to take the summer off. Perhaps her “I’m off politics for a while” statement was just her way of expressing displeasure at the radicals on both sides, or perhaps I just misread her. Whatever. She’s good today, as always. I find myself gravitating to the moderates, of late. Another good moderate-right blogger is Cassandra over at Villainous Company. Give her a read and see if you agree.