it goes from winter to summer rather suddenly here; although you are aware that there are signs of spring, blooming flowers & trees, mowing season and all, you get kind of comfortable in the blustery cool april, then the steamy sauna may hits you like opening the dryer, if you're not careful. and our dryer gets clogged up occasionally, so opening it is like opening into warm and steamy rather than warm and dry. warm and steamy is the weather here, in may, june and right into july when it eventually turns into warm and dry until about november. by warm i mean about 97 f. it doesn't get over a hundred much, but it does, every once in a while, and it feels like it, the other times, on account of the humidity.

so driving around is mostly like imagining the damage you do to the environment with the aircon blasting, or trying to live with warm steamy wind of opening the dryer, that is, the car windows. it's turtle season; i saw a dead one, and i saw one literally running across the street; this i would take to be proof of evolution, for if they don't speed up a little, they'll all be gone. i now have another son out on the road; he drove off today, new license, new mercedes (1989, actually, but very shiny)- and i don't know if he'll rescue turtles or not. the world looks different when you are first behind a car by yourself - though he has assured us he won't speed, he actually hasn't been in that position, by himself, before.

so i had to go to marion to pick up a fiddle bow that had been repaired, and i had, easily, an hour and a half or more to go only sixteen miles and back, but i almost didn't make it, because traffic was so bad, and there was some kind of construction, or maybe accident, and it wasn't even clear what was going on up ahead, it just seemed like long lines of cars waiting in the hot boiling sun. it wouldn't be so bad, except that i really haven't had much exercise, haven't swum, haven't walked, haven't nothing, so i began to boil. took the back roads, which fortunately i know a little, and barely made it. then the other day, the rains started coming down, and we were on our way home but the water was rising in the low spots around town. some places it was over a foot high and cars were driving through it; one got stuck, near our house, and we took it as a sign and turned back, tried another way around. the problem is, the sewers are kind of old, not huge, not capable of handling a quick downpour. several spots flood rather quickly. it's easy to be afraid; we're all on edge because of the great may derecho inland hurricane tornado, which hit last year about this time and took a few houses with it. when we got home there was no power; this is not unusual; also it stayed that way for five or six hours, which also is not that unusual, this being a small town and all.

i think about the boys, out there with little cars, little money, little choice, in some ways - on the other hand, of course, you could see them as having all the choice in the world. a third turtle, one i saved, had simply withdrawn inside himself, and stood, in the middle of a road, totally freaked by the cars, no doubt, now unable to cross the road, fast or slow, whatever. just sit still and hope nobody pops you. unfortunately when you're eighteen or twenty two you can't do that, and also, there are only so many times someone will stop their car, get out, and throw you back in the weeds. the mulberries are out - this i know for a fact, having seen a good one outside my own office building, although the japanese garden one, unfortunately, is history. mulberries are out, but, for turtles, this might not always be good. the huge and sudden rains are not such a problem for them; it's the ordinary roads, the ones that cut through their daily habitats, that they have trouble with. how do they know from rush hour?