Narrator (in a flat, matter-of-fact tone): "Summer has arrived in the city."

Voice 1 (with some concern): "That can't be; what happened to spring?"

Voice 2 (questioningly): "Spring?"

Voice 3 (sighing): "I was out of town for a couple of days; I missed spring."

Voice 4 (thoughtfully): "I remember spring...once. I think."

Voice 3 (knowingly): "Well, you know what they say around here: 'If you don't like the weather, wait a minute and it'll change.'"

Voice 4: (even more knowingly): "They say that everywhere."

Narrator (exasperatedly): "Good grief!"

Voice 2 (questioningly--again): "Have the midges gone?"

Voice 1 (with even more concern): "Oh, I hope so!"

Voice 3 (questioningly--see V2 above): "Midges?"

Voice 4 (with determination followed by some exasperation): "Yes; midges...you know, those nasty, little...Oh; never mind, you live on the other side of town."

Narrator (yeah; same tone): "Good grief!"

Narrator turns off microphone and turns on air conditioner.

Fact: Summer arrived at 4:20 a.m., June 21. Cleveland recorded its first 90-degree temperature of this season on that same date.

The "boys of summer" (local style) took two games of three from the New York Yankees over that first weekend of summer. The Indians have not done that very often of late.

The "girls of summer" (nationwide) played their first Women's National Basketball Association games over that weekend to some disappointing scores (local style) and big crowds (in most of the team cities). Nearly 11,500 were at The Gund to see the debut of the Cleveland Rockers. The Rockers had their problems and lost by 20, but the fans stayed with them all the way.

In the four WNBA venues, 50,756 turned out for the debut weekend.

And on the same weekend, amid the sharp smells and swirling smoke, they celebrated barbecue down at the Lakefront.

Fred Fleming flashed his familiar sign about his barbecue sauce being made from "the sugar of white sandy beaches and Everglades swamp water" and again carted away top prize from the "Great American Rib Cook-Off." He had won the bbq blue ribbon here in 1994.

The Kansas City Barbecue Society gave Fred Fleming's Famous Barbecue from Homosassa Springs, Florida, the trophy and $2,000 check for the "Greatest Ribs In America."

(And never mind that the KC BBQ Sox' top barbecuer--she's executive director Carolyn Wells--in a recent cooking magazine article, didn't even mention the Cleveland rib-lovers' competition as among the best in the country. She likes the ones in Houston, her hometown of Kansas City, and what she calls "the Mardi Gras of barbecue" in Memphis.)

Oh, a footnote to all this for backyard barbecue chefs: your weekend hobby is safe (at least for the moment). EPA wants to do more to clean up more of the environment, specifically, reducing the flow of ozone-causing chemicals into the air. That includes regulating microscopic soot, and a lot of that kind of junk comes from burning, and barbecuing is burning.

But the Environmental Protection Agency folks perhaps feeling a lot of heat from backyard grills), say they have never contemplated restricting the use of charcoal or gas grills. "That," the administrator says, "would defy common sense."

Defying common sense is a malady of these days of summer:

Example: a bunch of folks mounted up on a bunch of vintage horseless carriages (of course, if it's a "horseless carriage," one might suppose it is "vintage," mightn't one?) for an auto trip from Cleveland to New York City.

This was a re-run of the trip that Cleveland automotive pioneer Alexander Winton made in one of his cars in 1897. Now, a century later, a dozen historic Winton cars (circa 1899-1921) again set out on the 700-mile run. It wasn't an easy journey (not even on paved roads, something the early trip and a repeat in 1899 did not have): the oldest of the Wintons had to be hauled at least 200 of those miles.

Earlier this month, U.S. News & World Report gave the Winton Centennial run a page and half spread.

It's not the only recent national press coverage given local events: the same magazine in the same June 9 issue gave a page of coverage to an organization that most Clevelanders probably never heard of, WIRE-Net and its 11-year-old effort to keep industry from moving from Cleveland's West Side and to develop new businesses there.

Shortly after that article appeared, the Westside Industrial Retention and Expansion Network (WIRE-Net) got a quarter million dollars from the state for development of part of 10 acres of vacant land into an industrial park. And late next month, Life Magazine is scheduled to focus on Parmatown as an all-American shopping mall.

Yep, summer has come to the city.

It doesn't bring with it another summer of bicentennial activities, like last year. But, it's a pretty good start.

And, the Major League Baseball All-Star Game at Jacobs Field is only a few days away!

Uh, yeah; but, what happened to spring time?

Oh, good grief!

OTHER STORIES by John Herrington

RETURN TO Cleveland, The New American City