A Holiday Is Cancelled Out By Badly Needed Rain
By Josh Resnek
A tour of Everett’s neighborhoods on Labor Day, 2022 revealed a city without outdoor activities, nearly everything planned for cancelled on a day meant to mark the end of summer.
What happened to the sun and the heat when it was expected and desired?
Instead, the city appeared to be painted with a dull gray patina. Everything was gray.
The streets were gray.
Buildings were gray. The sky was gray. Cement sidewalks were gray. Whether you are old or young, you were gray on this day meant for outdoor fun.
The city so robust and alive with a plethora of activities the day before under brilliant sunlight, was unusually empty and subdued in appearance and utterly quiet and damp in the rain.
Everett gray in the rain was a bit like the city of London that Charles Dickens described hidden in the fog in his famous novel, “Bleak House.”
“Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ‘prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.”
Outdoor barbecues, parties and activities of all kinds were cancelled throughout the city. They disappeared the moment the rain began, although indoor parties went on in dozens of locations.
The rain was so badly needed it cannot be emphasized or overstated.
Everything that grows outdoors is bone dry.
Even two days of rain cannot bring back lawns, flowers and bushes lost this summer.
Glendale Park might well have been the subject of a still life portrait.
Not a person was in the park.
It was as empty of people as an outdoor concert cancelled because of the rain.
The end of the summer of 2022 did not come with a bang.
It ended with a whimper.
It came with many of us seated on our couches in our family rooms watching Netflix or streaming videos on our flat screens, munching on treats meant for our grills.
It ended just like that, with the snap of a finger and bad weather forecast – with a bit of rain.
Can you imagine a New England summer ending like this?
If you’ve lived here a lifetime, of course you can!