"In Northern New England, Indian summer puts up a scarlet-tipped hand to hold winter back for a little while.
She brings with her the time of the last warm spell, an uncharted season which lives until Winter moves in with its backbone of ice and accoutrements of leafless trees and hard frozen ground.
Those grown old, who have had the youth bled from them by the jagged edged winds of winter, know sorrowfully that Indian summer is a sham to be met with hard-eyed cynicism.
Starr Island from North Hampton
But the young wait anxiously, scanning the chill autumn skies for a sign of her coming.
And sometimes the old, against all the warnings of better judgment, wait with the young and hopeful, their tired, winter eyes turned heavenward to seek the first traces of a false softening."
Hampton, NH
--Grace Metalious
Obadiah Youngblood
Peyton Place
Phantom,
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone could describe Indian summer in New Hampshire more eloquently or accurately than Grace Metalious. Having grown up in New Hampshire, she certainly saw plenty of them and she captures those fleeting times beautifully. I like your choice of photos to illustrate the subject-testimony to how lovely the seacoast is in autumn. Apparently the bare breasted mermaid now a Hampton tradition-something different for tourists to gaze upon when they tire of the trees...Really like the Obadiah painting with the fall reds...
Maud
Ms. Maud,
ReplyDeleteI know Obadiah will be pleased.
Peyton Place (1956)came out 4 years before To Kill A Mockingbird and its theme was sexual (and by extension female) repression, but its climatic court room scene was over abortion, whether it can be justified by child rape and/or incest.
TKAMB was, of course, about Southern racism, and it had a more standard hero and its climatic court room scene implied child rape by in semi incest. It is a very good book, but Peyton Place, for me, is the trail blazer.
Some day, maybe Hollywood will see it differently and do it justice.
The Phantom