Right here we’re, in the course of August in Los Angeles, and I’m right here to say: That is terrible.
You already knew that should you reside within the valleys or actually wherever north or east of downtown L.A. These of us who do, nicely … we see these August forecast highs of, say, 86 levels for “Los Angeles” (as if town’s 469 sq. miles exclude Van Nuys or Woodland Hills), reflexively tack on 10 or 15 levels and quietly take care of our dread.
To these of you who reside in areas cooled by the Pacific Ocean’s breezes, do this: Drive just a few miles inland, say “August” and see what occurs. Utter it audibly, and somebody inside earshot may bleat, “Ugh.” Say it in your head after spending the afternoon right here, and it’ll be you who mutters in disgust.
August in L.A. doesn’t get the scorn it deserves. Raymond Chandler and Joan Didion familiarized everybody east of the Mississippi River with the Santa Ana winds, a lot that their undeserved mystique has lent itself to a minimum of one cringe-worthy rom-com scene, one fun TV musical number and limitless literary doomsaying. And Mike Davis wrote the (actual) ebook on excessive climate in Southern California.
However whereas these occasions usually spawn wildfires, floods and different calamities, they’re discrete phenomena that typically puncture in any other case nice instances. When the nice and cozy winds die down and the storms subside, we return to our frequently scheduled October-June perfection (offered an influence line doesn’t fail and light the San Gabriel Mountains on fire).
Not so with August, which guarantees dread for 31 days. Even the phrase, starting and ending with related vowel qualities, evinces monotony.
In July, with its June gloom leftovers, you may say, “Hey, summer season isn’t so unhealthy.” However when August arrives and the truth of interminable day-and-night warmth hits, it’s, “We’re actually doing this.”
Say somebody gives you a free ticket to Disneyland or a day sport at Dodger Stadium in July or September. Nice, however verify the forecast first. However Disneyland or Dodger Stadium underneath the August solar? Loss of life march.
Maybe I’m biased. Vin Scully died on Aug. 2, 2022. A 12 months later to the day, my mother died. As a toddler rising up in Glendale, I vividly recall the Verdugo Mountains hiding for a lot of August behind a curtain of smog, as if so as to add a suffocating, claustrophobic high quality to the specter of warmth stroke.
Talking of my mother — who dreaded summer season warmth in all probability greater than anybody else — she as soon as likened August to the ultimate weeks of being pregnant. An OB-GYN nurse at Los Angeles Normal Medical Heart (which to me will all the time be “County Hospital”), she etched a silver lining across the unceasing discomfort and occasional problems of the ninth month: It might be the physique’s means of constructing an individual much less terrified of childbirth.
So it was with August and for youths about to renew college, she as soon as informed me: The ultimate full month of summer season, on common the most popular in L.A., had a means of constructing kids sit up for the promise of cooler days in September, when college started.
Now, we’ve ruined even that, by shifting the beginning of college ever earlier into the worst month of the 12 months. Earlier than faculty, I by no means began class earlier than Labor Day — however on Tuesday, not even midway into August, my kids will start their cruelly named “fall” time period within the Alhambra Unified College District. L.A. Unified children will return even earlier, on Monday.
Channeling my mother, maybe there’s a far-off silver lining to this: With rising generations being plunked again into the classroom on the hottest time of 12 months, the dearth of literary wailing over August in L.A. might finish. In any case, after they’re scribbling their first writing assignments of the 12 months and searching for inspiration, they could discover it of their poorly air conditioned classrooms or on sizzling asphalt playgrounds unshaded from the August solar. The subsequent technology of Chandlers and Didions will detest this time of 12 months.
