It's dark- as dark as nightfall and the rain pelts the windows on this Saturday morning. Cafe business is booming. The business comes in waves of a dozen people or more, then there is no one coming for a while until the next wave. Many of the people are not locals, as I can see by their clothes and the vehicles they drive. No one from out of town has an old or rusted vehicle. Seems the American Dream, or what is left of it, has never touched Ironwood.
People are attending the softball tournament and I hope they like playing in the rain. There are funerals, weddings family reunions and sojourners passing from one end of Canada to the other, using the U.P. as part of their route. Ironwood has become a hub for many summer activities.
People, unaware that the weather was to cool to fifty-three degrees run through the rain, clad in tank tops, shorts and sandals. They must be chilled, to the least. Thunder shakes the gloomy overcast canopy. Puddles in the parking lot ripple with raindrops.
A young father in khaki cargo shorts holds the hand of his little daughter who holds an umbrella. The mother is at the girl's other side, deeply tanned and tattooes proliferate her limbs.
An elderly man shuffles from the street corner with an umbrella. I think he lives in the Pioneer Park Apartments a block away. I wonder if he is a widower. Is there sadness in his life manifested by his slow, melancholy shuffle? At least he is able to brave the inclement weather and eat a meal in the presence of others.
The parking lot and the street are full. But there is an anomaly. There are no pickup trucks. People with pickup trucks usually make up most of the cafe clientele on Saturday mornings.
The mini-vans and cars are inanimate yet the setting makes them forlorn in the gloom of dark weather. It is a shame that Mother Nature is so moody this morning so that the motorists have their lights on. I miss the knots of people chatting and hugging in the sunshine and I know that there will be other times of conviviality outside the cafe but the gloom is intolerable now, blinding me to that fact.
I recall that these halcyon summer days will yield to the dreary autumn and the interminable dreary winter and I will long for next summer's embrace of warmth and brightness.
No comments:
Post a Comment