It’s kind of cool out here on the front porch. Yes, cool in the sense that it is a nice place to hang out, but also cool in the sense of it’s not warm here right now. We had one of the mildest winters in recent memory, and now we have had the coolest start to the summer. This totally killed the tomato plants I so foolishly planted in late March, but it does not disprove global warming, in case you are wondering. What it does disprove is that I am the colonial governor of some tropical isle.
You may have already gotten substantive proof of this, but I still had my doubts. Just in case I do turn out to be the colonial governor of some tropical isle, I have purchased a Tommy Bahama shirt and a pair of white linen pants. This outfit does not really fit any better on my front porch than it does at the Windjammer on Sullvan’s Island (trust me, it doesn’t work there) but I do still enjoy it none the less. If only I had a laugh like that dude in the Panama Jack commercials.
Which you may or may not remember, depending on how much TV you watched in the mid-1980s. I watched a lot of TV. I was in my teens. The coolest thing to me was Late Night with David Letterman. I think it was cool because it was not Johnny Carson and it came on very late at night. Now I think the Johnny Carson show was cool. I also get the impression that Johnny himself was not so much. LA. David Letterman was form New York and New York was a place I got to go with my Dad and not many of the kids I knew had been. I could walk like Brando right down 5th Avenue and sneak cigarettes at Rockefeller Center.
I did not, except for a trip out to Coney Island, spend any time in Brooklyn. Or Queens. Or the Bronx or Staten Island even. I was not even sure what was out there except airports and Yankee Stadium. There are, of course, whole cities out there, some of which are more populated than many states. The first significant time I spent in Brooklyn was to visit my brother-in-law and his girlfriend – now wife (now with their daughter.) It’s like visiting Manhattan of 15 years ago.
And while located on an island, Brooklyn is not tropical. When we travel there this week, I will not take my linen pants, which will come as welcome news to my family. Still, I’ll be scouting out spots that might make good governor’s mansions. Not that I’m planning on moving any time soon, but one should always be prepared for the proverbial 3am call. Maybe I’ll sleep in the pants.