Pink Houses and Soggy Blankets

Suddenly, it's late August.

Right on schedule, Mother Nature has unleashed its fury on our southern neighbors, while we here in the Midwest are enjoying what appears to be an early autumn. My town's last art fair of the season will be dismantled later today, and, soon, the outdoor concert traffic will dissipate --  the ribbons of creeping cars, the shuttle buses, the endless parade of visitors dragging coolers and chairs and blankets and folding tables and movable feasts.

As the harbingers of summer that put a spring in our step in May and provided us with welcome diversions through the dog days begin to signal the transition into shorter and cooler days, I start to savor my last gasp. Yesterday, I spent hours wandering among the art fair tents, searching for the reasonably priced memento that is different enough from everything I already own to always remind me of the summer of 2017. I will resume my search today.

Last night, I felt particularly lucky to be squeezed into a tight rectangle of grass with friends to enjoy tacos and tequila and wine and brownies and grapes (grapes?) while we waited for John Mellencamp to blast out the oldies that would bring us all back to our own separate pasts. The rain came in fits and starts, but most of us stayed, didn't even bother with umbrellas. I was acutely aware of how blessed I was, last night, enjoying a concert in a little bit of harmless drizzle.

Two of us ventured off to get some ice cream, tiptoeing around the mosaic of soggy blankets, tripping on coolers, squeezing past the motley array of makeshift living rooms. Nobody minded the jostling, and lots of people even pointed toward the quickest paths through the maze. We strolled around the perimeter, forgetting about the ice cream -- just enjoying the show, on and off the stage.

And, re-entering the sea of soggy blankets around where we thought we had exited, we got lost. The golden 40th birthday balloons that had been our landmark had disappeared, and suddenly, in the dark, everything looked the same. "Do you remember us?" we asked as we moved from cluster to cluster, hoping we might have made an impression on someone on our way out. We hadn't. We found ourselves in the middle of a big party. Colleen, the ringleader, begged us to have some chicken. She had brought crab dip, but everyone else had brought chicken. She introduced us to her friends.

Eventually, lots of folks started to recognize us. "You again?" They couldn't believe we were still lost. "It feels like Groundhog Day," one of them said. A guy in one of our favorite groups insisted we take some beers with us. There would be more waiting for us at our next pass.

We found our friends. We told them about our harrowing journey. They had not even noticed we were gone. We danced, we packed up our little makeshift living room, and we made our way out of the park -- a little fatter, a little drunker, and very content.

I glanced back at the end of another summer filled with simple pleasures. Now, if that ain't America, I don't know what is.