I was riding down on the elevator this morning with a gentleman who regularly breaks his fast at the same place I do.
He was wearing his usual LBJ-style Stetson and some Clemson suspenders, having retired quite a few years back from the extension service.
As we stepped onto the elevator, as people tend to do, we started talking about the weather. (Yes, I know — we should all try harder than that.) Mindful of my audience, I expressed the wish that recently planted fields not be washed away, and mentioned how much nicer it would be if instead of getting our rain all at once, we could have a nice, steady drizzle for a number of days (my wife, the gardener, once told me that was better for crops).
He remarked that the weather used to be kinder that way, long ago. Then he said:
“When I was a boy, 75 years ago, we never heard of hurricanes. We called them…” and he paused to reach back for the term… “September Gales.”
That certainly sounds like a gentler, less menacing time.
I didn’t realize that term was a thing until I looked it up. Turns out it inspired a poem in The New Yorker, back in September 1960:
No, I wasn’t making a point about anything. Just sharing…
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