Spring, right on time...

Signs of Spring in Resort Areas, like Shelter Island

Well that’s it....the clocks have been turned forward, Easter and Passover are over, we’re all eating pastel colored egg salad sandwiches and leftover matzoh which means Spring is officially here!

Here's some signs of Spring where I live...

Daffodils and tulips are trumpeting their colors all over.

Tourists are already showing up. You can spot them on the ferries very easily, they hit their brakes when the ferry docks and race the gate to get off the ferry. But that sorta works out well, because when they race the gate, the ferry worker gets to hold up that all powerful hand and stop them with a face that says, “I don’t care if your car costs more than my house, this is Shelter Island and we all take turns and play nice, you moron.”

There’s tiny piles of dirt all over the lawn, new dirt means, the worms are building below.

Soon they’ll be big piles of new dirt above ground as we watch the new crop of McMansions spring up.

There''ll be new bunches of illegal aliens all over to build the McMansions.

Soon, we’ll hear the iron songbird of Spring, the John Deere riding lawnmower.

We’ll start hearing the latest round of “I don’t give a damn how they do it in the city....” stories of locals dressing down arrogant city people.

We’ll stand in line silently at the post office listening to someone from Florida demanding something impossible from our long suffering postal folk. We’ll wish that there was a separate line for locals, and knowing that it can’t be that way, we’ll size up the offending irritant as to whether we can fit their body into a small town bag because the large once cost more...

Men coated with spackle and paint will show up at deli’s with sandwich orders written on blocks of wood. I always wonder if their wives give them grocery shopping lists on planks...

The teenagers of Shelter Island increase the volume of their unceasing bain, “There’s nothing to do here” and “I’m bored.” My daughter always thought that these phrases constituted justification for drug indulgence. She didn’t realize that these phrases conjure up long lists of house and yard chores in the parental mind. These lists, coupled with the knowledge that they need our money for everything including drugs, gives us the leverage we need to get them to do anything at all, even though they can only do it halfway and half ass. It’s just as well. If they did anything start to finish, correctly, and the first time - the shock would kill us.

For me the greatest sign of Spring showed up on the side of my brother’s house. Clam rakes...two of them....nestled gently together in the morning sun. Their rusty baskets seemed to cry out, ”Clams...clams...give us clams....”

Oh yes, the best signs of Spring on Shelter Island, are the ones we can dip in butter.