Joy in Boston as Spring Falls on a Weekend

BOSTON. Spring is the season that inspires poets and causes young men’s thoughts to turn to love, but in New England it is part rumor and part myth. “There is no spring here,” a British soldier wrote to his young wife during the Revolutionary War, “only a second winter of cold rain and sleet. It is not worth sending The Dave Clark Five to the colonies, much less The Beatles.”

Ed Sullivan: “The Beatles couldn’t make it, so here’s The Dave Clark Five!”

But this year there was joy in Boston as spring, which is a three-month “season” in other parts of the world, began Friday around noon and continued until late morning Saturday, allowing many to experience sunny skies and mild temperatures they would otherwise miss because of the season’s fleeting length in this region.

“See sweetie?  Up there–spring!”

“We welcome spring to Boston,” Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said in an official proclamation composed by in-house public relations staff.  “Visitors make an important contribution to the economy of our region, by pahking their cahs on streets where ‘No Parking’ signs are, as Ernest Hemingway said of Paris, a moveable feast.”

While the Northwest is widely thought of as the wettest area of the country, it places second in average annual rainfall to the Northeast, a fact that some say is responsible for the reserved, dour temperament of the native New Englander. “Who said I was dour?” asks Fred Twining, III, a descendant of the yeoman farmers of the region who built America’s first strip mall, Shopper’s World. “Probably some smart-aleck ‘grunge’ kid from Seattle.”

Ye Olde Colonial Strip Mall

Spring is a season that typically falls between winter and summer in other parts of the country. In New England, it is characterized first by snow, then freezing rain, then followed by summer, then hurricane season, then plagues of toads

Mayor Walsh recognized the occasion by allowing the two city employees who did not call in sick Friday to leave early in order to enjoy the weather.  “There will be no threat to public safety, as they were essentially non-essential,” he said.  “But then–aren’t we all.”