Tuscaloosa, Alabama

If summer doesn’t end soon, I’m going to overdose.

Yes, this is another shot from the Farmers Market. I expect to post several more before the week is over, so apologies to those who wish I would find a new subject.

There’s just something about long, hot days stretching into long, hot nights that makes me want to drink in the best of everything the South has to offer. As we head into the dog days of summer, I can finally feel my spirit stirring, waking from a self-imposed hibernation.

Cicadas hum in the trees, reminding me of the summer Nicholas and I moved here. We were happy to be moving, excited about our new apartment, which was everything our old one wasn’t — bright and airy, spacious, and spider-free. Every night we would drive over the bridge, let ourselves in the unlocked door, and check out the progress the maintenance crews had made earlier in the day. As we sat cross-legged on the floor, planning where the furniture would go, stopping to kiss before leaping up and chasing each other through the empty rooms, I knew that these moments would be some of the happiest we would ever have. I was right.

Before long, I will be busy shooting football, and the lazy summer afternoons will give way to hectic evenings chasing deadlines. The harder I try to hold on to these fleeting days, the more quickly they seem to slip from my hands. There is so much I want to read, so many wonderful summertime movies I want to watch, so many things I want to experience that only happen this time of year.

I immerse myself in literature, steeping my soul in the prose that runs through every Southerner’s blood. Faulkner. Welty. Lee. Windham. Childress. Grisham. There isn’t enough time. I curl up in bed at night, torn between Grisham’s A Painted House and Jimmy Buffett’s Tales from Margaritaville.

So far, Buffett is winning, which reminds me — it’s almost 4 a.m. I should crawl between the sheets and see if I can finish a few chapters before I nod off. If I’m lucky, I can wake up by daylight, slip into a booth at City Cafe, and listen to the whir of the overhead fans mingle with the laughter of men on their way to work as I wait for my western omelet and hash browns.

When I close my eyes, I can almost taste it. It tastes like summer. It tastes like the South. It tastes like home, and there’s no place else I’d rather be.

Music: “That Summer” by Garth Brooks (lyrics)

Pic of the day: “Home Away From Home” by Ryan at Ryan Rahn Photography. 

Posted on August 1, 2005 by Carmen K. Sisson tagged Alabama, flowers, Tuscaloosa, writing