A Passionate Pursuit of Paradise

It Might As Well Be Spring, Be Spring, Be Spring

  When I was a little boy a very long time ago I got sick with a cold that settled in my ear.  An infection developed and a doctor, who I really hated, came to the house sat on me and lanced the infection.

  And if that weren’t bad enough he told me that I couldn’t go outside for two weeks.  It was the middle of April; I had already begun a life-long love affair with spring.

  I knew that by May first most of the trees, the huge Dutch elms and oaks in our Cleveland Heights neighborhood would begin to burst into leaf. (You could almost hear it happening)

 

  That it might be warm enough to go outside without a sweater. That opening day was waiting in the wing. That the air would smell sweet and clean, and it probably wouldn’t snow anymore. Even those ugly blackened remnants would be gone. And Jerry Middleton our janitor wouldn’t have to get up in the middle of the night and start throwing coal in the furnace to provide coal for our radiators. 
  It was a wonderful time of renewal, and even as a small boy I sensed it. As did so many writers and musicians in the years to come.

  So I grew up with mixed feelings about spring. Always being reminded of that hated doctors and my ear which might again start aching at any moment, and the coming of good weather.

  Let’s  fast forward several generations. I am an octogenarian, still hooked on spring. This annual Cleveland frustration, annoying, taunting wait for the first blossoms, Now that I am free, I decided to beat the rap.  Why not capture it over and over again in a single year?

  It happened almost by accident when my friend Margie and I decided to share our houses to suit the weather.  Hers in snow free Texas in the winter and mine in Cleveland in summer.  For a couple years now we have become something like those nuts that chase tornadoes, we had become spring chasers

  I must confess that in the winter Texas is not the most beautiful place in creation. Far from it. In January and February everything turns brown, the grass, the gnarly looking  barren Cedar trees. So in February we headed for Florida, in a search of spring. And as we drove along the hurricane battered Gulf through Louisiana, Alabama and than Florida the green began to appear mile by mile and by the time we hit Tallahassee, early spring had arrived. And still south to Sarasota it had emerged in all its glory.  A month later we headed back north and then west and watch the green slowly reappear.  By the time we got back to central Texas the bareness reappeared, with patches of green and occasional sprouts of blue to hint of things to come.        

   And as the month of March went on spring arrived, and with some long need rain it burst forth almost like and explosion. It was magnificent and into April the poppy fields, were brilliant, the fields were full of wild flowers of purple, green and orange and yellow.         

My tulip garden

  By mid April I figured it was safe to come back to Cleveland and encounter the home town spring that I had learned to love, flying this time. The day I climbed aboard Continental flight 34, it was 82 and glorious at the Austin airport. As we neared Hopkins the pilot announced that the rain had passed, the skies were clearing, and it was in the upper 40’s. But no snow.        

  Cleveland spring, I have concluded, is like a temptress. A sultry fan dancer, that shows you a little bit then covers it up. Then a little more to get you really and excited.  And then the rain and the cold reappear, enhancing the frustration.  Maybe, I’m thinking I should have stayed in Texas a wee bit longer and really beat the rap…or should I wait here for just a few more days and see that beautiful lady in all her magnificent beauty?