Those Summer Days

Everyone is going somewhere--again.  Q is in NYC.  C.C. has been touring Texas for seemingly a month.  My midwest friend is off to (to me as yet) parts unknown.  Tennessee is gone for nearly another month.  The college kids are gone, too.  Country Club College has ended their school year, and the town is so very much uglier for it.  OK, sure. . . I'm a prick, but those boys and girls sparkle and shine, tall and leggy and fit and dressed like fashion kings and queens.  They are replaced by summer camp kids, boys and girls from the hinterland.  They fill the dorms and sidewalks.  They come for the STEM programs, and I would assume most are being funded in some way or another.  Their legs are shorter, their middles thicker, their eyes less sparkly, their movements less smooth.  All in all, there is a tremendous lack of self-confidence.  Rather, they are possessed of a tremendous self-consciousness.  The thing is obvious, but I know it from the inside.  I grew up among them.

It is the money, of course, that makes the difference.  One year's tuition at Country Club is $60,580.  Room and board is another $16,820.  That's $310,00 for a four year degree.  

The kids drive some luxury mobiles, too.  

Over a third of the students major in business and finance.  I looked it up.  Country club calls itself a "Liberal Arts College."  Students majoring in any of the liberal arts make up just 29% of the student population.  

I.E.--most are majoring in money.  

I'm thinking Country Club should rebrand itself, but what do I know.  Just one thing.  My little hometown's beauty quotient just took a big hit.  

C.C. has been sending me some pretty spectacular photos from his Texas trip.  I live in a state where everything is new.  He is sending me photographs from the past, big neon signs from long ago, hand painted logos, crazy restaurants. . . .  Same things come from my midwest friend.  There is a visual goldmine out there.  I need to go.  

But mom is not doing so very well.  It is getting the better of me, I'm afraid.  She's getting confused about things.  My feet are in quicksand.  I can't seem to get away.  I'm stuck now in a sweltering town full of ugly transients.  

That's just so wrong.  One shouldn't think such things let alone say them out loud.  But it is my truth.  

I'd like to see a study done on the political leanings of business and finance majors vs. liberal arts majors.  Surely someone has done one.  I will have try to look it up.  

It is Friday, the second day of the weekend for most of you now, so you are off for four days, Monday being Memorial Day.  It is the unofficial official start of summer, grills a grilling, beers a popping.  Lawn chairs and a summer's reading list.  Lazy days.  Breezy clothes and evening cocktails.  

Isn't that something.  

Maybe I'll buy an ice cream maker.  I'll bet that would cheer my mother up.  

That and a little Sly.  Best summer song of all time.  It's a love song, if you listen.  Here she comes back. . . there she goes.