Three seasons . . . not four!

Another View

By Andy Rooney
Published on Thursday, March 11, 2010 9:08 PM CST



Of all the seasons, I like spring the least. Spring doesn’t start for a couple of weeks, but I thought I’d get a jump on explaining my dislike. I like summer, I like fall and winter, but I’ve never cared much for spring, especially early spring. If we took a vote, I suppose summer would be the favorite. I’d like it to be fall all 12 months. (That may have something to do with football.)

The trouble with spring is, it doesn’t know whether to be winter or summer, and ends up neither. We like it because we’ve been cold for four months, but spring can be either too cold or too warm. We don’t know what to wear.

The month of March ends when spring begins, and seldom do we get a warm day all month. I’d like to see statistics on the use of heating fuel during March. I’ll bet we use heating fuel and electricity almost as much in March as in January or February. I think the month of March gives spring a bad name.

It’s an amazing thing that we can live on this globe called “Earth.” I don’t know whether conditions on Earth just happen to be right to support life, or whether living things adapted to the conditions as they evolved. If Earth ever gets a lot warmer or colder, life could become very uncomfortable — not to mention expensive. Depending on which way things went, people would crowd into Alaska or Florida.

A lot of people go to Florida in the winter now, of course, and those of us who stay up North find anyone who likes Florida warmth hard to understand.

Clothes are one of our big expenses in all seasons. (The clothing industry has done a good job of making the lighter clothes we wear in the summer just as expensive as the heavier things we wear in the winter.)

My father traveled in the South most of his life and was the first person I ever knew who wore seersucker.

I’ve since found out that seersucker is a great cloth for covering the body in hot weather.

I like khaki but seersucker is cooler.

I spent a month of my life in India, and if I never go back it will be too soon.

I like Indian food, but it’s a mystery to me why Indian food is made hot to the taste. The temperature in Bombay may be 102 in the shade, but the food is hotter.

The heating and cooling systems we’ve developed for our houses and work spaces are great. I suppose the time will come when they figure out a way to control the climate of our whole earth. Eventually, we may not need furnaces or air conditioners.

When I was young and my father was out of town, my mother took care of the furnace in the basement.

A company dumped tons of coal in our basement every few weeks in the winter, and Mom shoveled it into the furnace. Coal was efficient and kept the house as warm as oil does now.

So now I’m waiting for spring to begin, so I can prepare my house for summer and fall.

Write to Andy Rooney at Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207, or via email at aarooney5@yahoo.com

 


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