Alternate universe

What an amazing phenomenon it is to live out here and experience the start of the summer season. Anyone who doesn't live in a resort area can't imagine it, really. Friday morning it was as though I had stepped into an alternate universe from the minute I got out of bed. There was a palpable feeling in the air, as though suddenly the house had landed in Oz and I was about to find it populated with odd little people.

About 7:30 I was reading the paper and eating my morning granola when the ambulance pager went off. It seemed a perfect time to go on a call, early enough to beat the worst of the traffic and still nice and cool out there. Ha! All the way to Southampton Hospital as I drove the ambulance I was astounded by the traffic coming east. The cars and trucks were backed up all along the highway from Wainscott to Southampton Village, a creeping line of vehicles snaking their way out to the end of the island. Wow.

We left the hospital shortly after 8am and had to use the back roads to get home in decent time. And this was before most people had even gotten out of bed. We were in for a weekend, no doubt about it!

I tried to keep close to home the rest of the weekend, although I did venture into the village a few times to check on how things were running. The TCOs were busy directing traffic at the lights to keep things moving - no pushing through yellow and red lights and jamming up the intersections this weekend! But mostly we stayed home. There was plenty of cooking, cleaning and organizing to do so it was easy to find things to keep busy with.

But the most striking thing to me was the "feeling" of the weekend. It was an unmistakable atmosphere of "summer" - and people for the most part were happy and pleasant, with the exception of a few horn honkers that were annoying to say the least. But the season is upon us now and there's no turning back. And who would want to?