If you ask me why I love it first I would close my eyes and breathe. There is the smell of sweat and animals, dry sawdust, damp hay. And the fine smell of grease, and of foods I don’t like to eat but like the smell of.

Next, with my eyes still closed, I would pause my breath and listen. The sound that children make is a universal one, the same anywhere in the world. You can hear it at playgrounds or bus stops or wherever two small children are paired and free. You know the sound. You can even remember making it.

Then I’d open my eyes and see people. There are all sizes and kinds and there is something, I think it’s joy. And even the irritation or exhaustion or thirst has joy in it, because it is the irritation or exhaustion that is the late arriving guest of satisfaction. Because these are summer days at the end of the summer. And these are foods you never eat because they are too sweet or decadent but here you are allowed to, because they’re temporary, flavors of summer ending. And the anticipation of winter, and the fact that it is remembered or imagined as always being harder than it really is, and summer being gone for longer than it really is, this affords you some gluttony. So you feast on summer right before it turns to grief, trying to hold on to it or trying to take it with you, burying it in your stomach and planting it in your veins. Summer is never over, only dormant for awhile.