And if you grew up in New Jersey, or maybe even somewhere else, Bruce Springsteen was playing on someone's car radio. The car was parked out by a field, headlights on, radio on. Summer, I've always believed, is the time when nothing can really go wrong. To understand this feeling you have to live in a place with real seasons. Fall is always melancholy, plagued with that sense that something is dying.
Winter usually bears down hard, long and dark, cold and unforgiving.
Time stops in winter. Spring can be rainy and still cold, stringing you along with the promise of warm weather. But then, often abruptly, Summer arrives. And in one quick, hot, blink, all the dreariness of the months of bad weather is erased. In my book, the worst Summer will always be a thousand times better than any Winter.