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Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

It’s time for back-to-cool sales.

Pick up a parka.

And back-to-school sales.

It’s an August sublime. I’m still eating sweet corn, and the Minnesota Twins are still in the running. I recall a Luther League trip to Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington to watch the Twins during my first childhood. We sat in the cheap seats far from home plate. The only people seated farther away were my parents, who were at home. There are foods we like but grow tired of, and there are foods we like that we don’t grow weary of. One of the joys of living where I do is the tasty sweet corn that finds me each year.

They say, “For every fog in August, there will be a snowfall in winter.” I knew a guy who kept track of the August fog numbers by tossing a penny in an old pickle jar on each foggy day.

Undoubtedly, you’ve noticed that “they” say a lot. They never stifle themselves.

While some weather folklore has some truth or valid ties to nature and weather, much does not. In my area, we usually have about 23 days with at least .01 inch of snow per year. Minneapolis, according to NOAA National Center for Environmental Information, gets 38 snowfalls of that amount. So, that city would have to get more than one fog a day in August. August is an august month, but it might not be up to that challenge.

Dog Days are the 40 days typically considered to begin on July 3 and end on Aug. 11. This period of sweltering weather coincides with the year’s heliacal (at sunrise) rising of Sirius, the Dog Star. I’m a believer that if you like hot and humid weather, you’ll like anything. It can be so hot and humid that my neighbor Crandall becomes a man of his word. That word is “uffda.”

It’s the time of the year when you get on the bathroom scale and say, “Well, I can’t blame the holidays for those pounds.”

I had a great uncle named August Sundstrom. He was born in Iowa to parents who had immigrated from Sweden. His parents named him after his older brother, also named August, who had died before the second August’s birth. His parents weren’t about to let a fine name like August go to waste, so they named a second boy August. He had six older sisters. One was my grandmother. I was told that August studied to be a lawyer but didn’t take to it. So, he became a farmer in Missouri. He might have had a field smaller than today’s average combine. He died in the Show Me State when he was 89, having been born before there were pine tree air fresheners. To enjoy the smell of the great outdoors, August needed to chop down a small pine tree and hang it from the rear-view mirror of his car. All that exercise likely contributed to his good run of years.

The month was named after the Roman emperor Augustus Caesar, and July was named after Julius Caesar, but no month is named Sid after the ancient comedian Sid Caesar. Sid really wasn’t that ancient. Sid Caesar cashed in his chips in 2014, so we might have a month named Sid one day.

August has three birthstones. Peridot is a yellow-green stone that comes from the mineral olivine. Spinel comes in a variety of colors, such as red, pink, orange, purple, blue and green.

Sardonyx is a combination of the minerals sard and onyx (coincidentally, I played football with a guy who was a combination of sard and onyx), which together form a reddish-brown or orange stone with bands of white or black. Those of us born in March also have three birthstones—one is aquamarine, another is bloodstone and the third is a petrified strawberry Twizzler. Yay, us, Marchies!

There are five Fridays this August. That gives us ample opportunities to say, “TGIF.”

Mary Oliver wrote, “Joy is not made to be a crumb.” I’d add that we should enjoy each day because we are a captive audience.

If you don’t like August, light a scented candle that smells like your favorite month, which is probably March.

Al Batt’s columns appear in the Tribune every Wednesday.