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BIG CITY: Some odds and ends for the dog days

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Staff

by Kirk Ross

This is my favorite time of year here in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro metroplex – the only real pause we have left in the yearly cycle, the last remaining nod to the time when the university schedule ruled the pace. The summer sessions ended more than a week ago. Students are gone and the academy is closed for the season. Even the basketball camps have wrapped it up.

On top of that, about a quarter of the year-round populace is on vacation somewhere else.

Don’t know how to explain it, but there’s an old-school feel that settles into downtown for the few weeks of early August. Modernity seems to slip away, and, like Brigadoon, that sleepy Southern college town on the hill emerges once again. It’s always there, of course, but it’s harder to notice when commerce and education are revved up and the sidewalks are packed with people making phone calls. With all that on pause and the dog days upon us, there’s that place again. The one the old-timers talk about.

On the radar
On the .83 acres of land owned by me, the Mrs. and the credit union, there’s just shy of two-dozen mature trees, split about evenly between hardwoods and conifers. When we first saw the place, we didn’t notice the distinct lack of lower branches on many of the trees. We later found out that the cause of that was Hurricane Fran, which had hit our new neighborhood hard several years before. Prior to that, the little lot had about three-dozen mature trees.

This town hasn’t really taken a hit like Fran in a while, but it’s worth remembering that we can. When I was down on the coast recently, there was a very good article in the Wilmington paper by a local doctor on swimming safety. He closed with the reminder to “never turn your back on the ocean.” This time of year, that’s good advice for those of us inland as well, especially given the extremes in the weather. Just this week, a tropical storm formed in the Caribbean. Right now, no one is certain of the track it’ll take. It could slowly curve out to sea or be in Charleston by Sunday. Ether way, it’s passing over mighty warm water.

Nationwide from the porch
Summer is full of distractions and if you don’t manage them, the season will shoot right by before your swimming trunks are dry. Having recognized this phenomenon early in life, I’ve developed several strategies for drawing out the season, most of which involve finding good reason for staring out into space and doing nothing. We used to call them pastimes.

For me, one of the most efficient ways to do nothing is to listen to a baseball game on the radio. A few years back, I picked up an application for my computer phone — hat tip to Taylor Sisk — that lets me listen to any major league hometown radio broadcast, including the station that I grew up listening to and that around here is all but impossible to find, except late at night when the team is on the West Coast and the weather here is favorable for AM reception.

Now it’s crystal clear 24/7, and most nights mixed into the summer soundtrack is the call of a game and subsequent hooting, hollering and umpire second-guessing.

Since it is a sport without time, most people in this clock-addicted world can’t bear to even watch a game on television. Me neither, but not because it’s boring, but rather due to there being far too many flashy graphics and gimmicks and too much non-game chatter. Give me a dull pitchers’ duel told in short descriptive sentences by a couple of radio vets any day. Let the sound of the pitch, the ump, vendors, the murmur of the crowd and bump bump bump from the stadium organist fill the spaces.

Late summer should be a slow jam. Get there any way you can.

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