THE RECENT PERSEID METEOR SHOWER WAS ENJOYED AS WE WERE ON A VISIT TO FAMILY AND FRIENDS IN NEW YORK AND PENNSYLVANIA.
I say “enjoyed” loosely as there were precious few chances to actually observe the reportedly spectacular display. CA’s brother-in-law – I’ll call him Dick – and I decided to take lawn chairs out into the back yard at the appropriate hour and await the show. There were clouds. Yet, there were holes in the cloud cover and a “hole” seemed to hover over Dick’s back yard conveniently for most of the evening.
As we were setting up the chairs and facing the correct direction, northeast, I looked up and saw a meteor streak across the sky – actually the the hole in the cloud cover – and cried out, “There’s one!”. But, of course it was gone in a twinkling of an eye.
It was a cool evening. I had to resort to a sweatshirt to find a level of comfort that was doable. Waiting for shooting stars, as I have always known the phenomenon, is an activity that borders on the edges of boredom.
Dick and I would occasionally engage in a form of sophisticated humor – at least we thought of it that way, being a couple of post High School Scholars – and say things like, “I think I saw a glimmer over toward Cassiopeia. Did you see that?” Then Dick would say, “I might have. Where is Cassiopeia?”
The neighbor guy came over shortly and stood gazing upward with us and offered a helpful comment now and then. After a while he said good night and left us to our quest. It was getting colder. Dew was collecting on us but we persisted in our search.
After one space of about five or six minutes of silence – men can do that, women can not – Dick said, “This is kind of like fishing, isn’t it?” I agree as I laughed along with him. Here we are waiting for a bite. We saw five or six unremarkable streaking meteors. Nothing like the one a minute the prognosticators promised.
There were clouds. There was reflected light in the sky. We would have been blinded by streaking meteors under optimum conditions, of course. However we did not have those conditions. We did have good beer.
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