August is, hands down, the best time to be a commuter in Floral Park and on Long Island in general.
On any given week, enough people are on vacation or working abbreviated hours to make the drive or the train commute smooth and speedy. The relative quiet on the roads makes for less stressful driving, just as the sunshine and slower pace of summer tamp the general stress of life. Even managers and bosses take a little time off, lightening the atmosphere at work.
It used to be just the opposite. Schools close in the summer, not because it’s too hot to study, but because the food-growing months were once upon a time the busiest season of the year, when people, like squirrels, gathered and stored as much food as possible for the fallow season.
Winter was the only time children were sufficiently free of duties necessary for the family to survive to attend school. Nowadays it’s so easy to get food that fat is a bigger problem (no pun intended) than famine.
So let’s be thankful that we have summers for fun, that we’re well-fed without having to toil in the soil, and knuckle down for the traffic jams of fall.
