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July License Plate ReportJuly 31, 2006 Hot damn, it's the changeover -- summer's half over. Changeover's when the July people leave and the August people arrive. August rents are higher; August people are said to be richer, cooler, better known than July people. I don't know if we have July and August people any more. The people I glimpse talking earnestly on cell phones behind the wheels of their shiny cars mostly don't look like they belong to a particular month, or a particular planet for that matter. If they got off on the wrong island, it'll take them most of a month to figure it out. Rhodry was greeted this morning by a woman who remembered him from last year and the year before that. She was glad to see him; he was glad to see her, especially because she gave him a cookie. We walked up Dunham toward my house. She said she couldn't understand how anyone manages to survive here year-round. That's my kind of summer person: the other kind(s) don't know it's an issue. She'd already noted the FOR SALE BY OWNER sign on Dunham, one house in from Skiff. Family with young kids: they're struggling too hard, even with mother/grandmother living next door. My-kind-of-summer-person said she and her husband had been coming here 28 years, planning on retiring here; now they don't know. Their assessment has gone through the roof; she doesn't dare look at her tax bill. We talked about insurance (several of her neighbors have had theirs cancelled or priced over the moon) and affordable housing, and about how if any island town ever seriously cracked down on illegal dwelling units, the housing crisis would immediately become a housing catastrophe. I have to get her name. I was well on the road to forgetting that there are any summer people whose feet are in the mud of this place -- not as deep as many year-rounders' feet, but deeper than plenty of the year-round summer people's feet. Anyway, I thought July was going to be a bust, then Friday Rhodry and I were strolling down Main Street after my optometrist appointment and there was Wyoming, bucking bronco and all. Still need Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Hawaii, and (of course) North Dakota. August is good for something, I guess.
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