Sunday morning temperatures in Pompano Beach, Florida this week dipped into the forties. To people living in the upper Midwest, and New England, this is not news. In fact, in some of those places during the long winters, any temperatures in the forties might be considered balmy, so it has been interesting to observe how the true natives here, AKA Floridians, have reacted to the relative cold.
I’ve been living in Pompano Beach for ten weeks now, growing slowly used to the warmer climate and increased humidity that doesn’t exist in Colorado, even in the summer, when humidity levels can remain under ten percent for long periods. It’s funny how, over time, people become accustomed to temperatures, wherever they may live.
While walking my dog Dudley at around seven this morning, I saw a neighbor, who was returning from an early breakfast at a local IHOP and wearing what appeared to be a heavily quilted and hooded sweatshirt with gloves. After saying a quick good morning and asking how I was weathering the storm, he rushed indoors as though the temperature were twenty below. OK, it was rather windy, but I was wearing only a light summer jacket and long pants (for the first time discarding short pants since I came here) and felt quite comfortable.
The only other person I saw was a lady walking her dog while wearing a muffler around her face and a coat that could have kept Nanook of the North toasty warm during a blizzard. She waved at me while rushing back indoors with the surprised little dog, as I pondered something a Florida friend had told me upon my arrival here last December. “You will become used to the warmer weather here, John, so that within a couple of years, even sixty degrees will seem very brisk.” He was probably right about that, though I haven’t reached the point of feeling comfortable in ski garb when we experience temperatures only in the forties. Only God knows how these folks would do in Denver or Boston this time of year.
About John
About John
John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes.
Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018
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