The Column: Summer, it seems, is on fast-forward

Leave it to Shakespeare.

“ … summer’s lease hath all too short a date,” he said in Sonnet 18.

On the off chance you did not recall Sonnet 18, this is the one that begins, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

Hooray for Google.

Anyway, before you know it, bingo, summer hath gone again. Amazing.

The stretch between Fourth of July and Labor Day is a blur under the best of circumstances, but in the middle of a pandemic, when one day folds into another and you can’t remember whether it’s Wednesday or the weekend, wow, Shakespeare might not have signed that lease in the first place.

Embracing the inevitable, I already am into corduroys and flannel shirts. Wigwam gym socks — white and woolly — and a wrecked pair of boat shoes complete the look. Fashion, I do as well as the tango.

“Dad, do NOT tuck your T-shirt into the chinos,” my elder daughter, closet full of shoes and scarfs, said several years ago. “Geeky.”

Muttering, I untucked.

“Nobody’s worn a turtleneck since Sammy Davis Jr.,” she said during another intervention.

To keep the peace, I stashed my turtlenecks in the milk crate where I keep cruddy winter walking clothes but now may dig them out just to annoy the family fashionista. Why not?

Where were we?

Ah, yes, summer fleeting.

Another one in the books, you whisper to yourself.

Better believe it. Chin up, pal.

All those songs and greeting cards matching life to the change of seasons don’t lift the spirits, either. “And the days dwindle down to a precious few …”

We know, already.

No wonder my sighs lately are gale force. Summer kaput, autumn, ahoy. (After which, as the poets remind us, comes winter. Don’t think about it.)

For me, summer’s end means Southampton.

My parents, Winnie, a pool secretary, and Fred, a truck driver, were not exactly regulars in the South Fork social scene. But once a year, the week before Labor Day, we packed up the black, 1939 Pontiac — and, later, the frog-green ’51 Ford — and headed from 69th Street, Brooklyn, to Aunt Ann and Uncle Jack’s little summer cottage in a spot called Southampton Shores.

Ann and Jack had a bit of money — Jack, my godfather, ran some sort of heating or boiler business — which made them exotic as parrot finches at the Prospect Park Zoo.

Still their particular vacation nook was not crawling with corporate barons or big-name lawyers or movie celebrities. Unlikely you’d meet Ava Gardner or Cary Grant at the local deli — Garamone’s, I think — which was a shame because I had deep feelings for Ava Gardner ever since I saw her wearing a filmy, off-the shoulder gown in “One Touch of Venus.”

Being out of the city was even more exciting than Ava’s inspiring outline.

You could hear the buzz and twitter of bugs and birds. You could walk to the beach and skim stones across the water and count the ridges on scallop shells.

Jack owned a boat with an inboard motor. We cruised Peconic Bay.

“Want to take the wheel?”

“Really?”

At the cottage, there was Coke in green bottles, bologna sandwiches and bowls of potato chips.

Ann and Jack had a daughter, Joanne, beautiful and with a cream-colored Mercury convertible. If I thought Joanne had any interest in marrying a 10-year-old, I would have proposed.

At night, Ann and Jack and Winnie and Fred played pinochle and drank highballs. Mom and Dad laughed in a way life did not always allow back in Brooklyn.

“One more hand?”

“Why not?”

In a bedroom I listened like a code-breaker during the war. What secrets might the giddy adults carelessly reveal?

Under my pillow, I shoved a little radio from the night table because the Dodgers were in St. Louis. Mostly, I heard static but, still, you could get the drift. Musial homers. Cards take the lead. C’mon Campy, Gil, Pee Wee, Jackie: Geez, you guys, c’mon.

Then it was over.

Sunday before Labor Day, we headed back. Dad driving, Mom in front. Backseat, I watched. The trip seemed long — all the way from country to concrete — and, soon, I slept.

Next thing you know it was PS 170.

“How was summer?”

“I dunno. Short.”

Another cycle doth begin and, though I wouldn’t have thought to say so then, another goes in the books.