Summer, like the baseball season, started off at a torrid, record-threatening pace-only, it seems, to crumple rather meekly at the end.
For its last open weekend of the year, the Ridgeland Common pool in Oak Park had a comfy water temperature of 77 degrees, yet its gleaming surface lay unrippled Sunday afternoon, the surrounding deck chairs as desolate as Wrigley Field’s bleachers.
“Yeah, we’re open-just no one decided to come,” said lifeguard Meg Symington, 18, as she munched on an apple. No one had decided to come Saturday either.
The Labor Day weekend is the last open weekend for Chicago’s beaches as well, yet with both air and water temperatures in the 60s, a brisk wind and no sunshine, the rush for one final dip into the city’s greatest natural resource was being made more by gulls than by people.
At the North Avenue Beach, a lifeguard atop his chair tower kept steady watch over another lifeguard in a rowboat who battled the choppy waters to remain stationary. Occasionally, an actual beachgoer would divert their attention by venturing into the water-several bold steps up to the knees, a few timid steps up to the waist, and then many giant steps back to the sand and a towel.
A bit farther north, two sisters sat amid an impressive picnic on the sand as a 7- and 9-year-old boy made sandcastles and a wizened 12-year-old girl cocooned herself in a space blanket.
“The kids were going to have a beach party no matter what,” said Jackie Ribich, playing host to her sister and children from Wheaton.
“We had planned all summer to come to the beach, and we saved it for this day,” Lois Rhoades, the sister, added with a laugh.
The chilly Labor Day weekend has by no means been a record-breaker; temperatures have not approached the low of 44 in 1988 nor the coldest high 61 in 1974. Still, in a summer that featured six consecutive 90-plus days in June, the cool-down was a let-down for many.
“I think we’ve been cheated, bro,” said Rich Hernandez, 28, as he prepared for a softball game in Humboldt Park. “We could’ve had a lot of hotter days in the high 80s-you know, beach weather.”
Bob Roper, 48, of Chicago, touted what’s become a popular theory: that summers really are getting shorter. “Every year it gets faster and faster,” he said on North Avenue Beach. “Pretty soon there won’t be any summer.”
Overall, the summer of 1994 actually has been fairly average: June was a couple of degrees warmer than normal, July was average and August was about 3 degrees cooler than normal. But the thermometer’s dip toward autumn only accentuates Labor Day’s symbolic signaling of summer’s end, even though the season still has more than two weeks to go.
At Schaumburg’s Septemberfest, Elgin resident Bernie Golzer, 50, said the occasional sprinkle wasn’t dampening her day, but she couldn’t help associating the festival with the coming of fall.
“That’s what’s bad,” Golzer said. “It’s the end of summer. It makes me think of Florida real fast.”
In Busse Woods Forest Preserve in Elk Grove Village, members of the Ambrosiani Club, a local organization whose members are somehow connected to the tiny Sicillian town of S. Ambrogio, were so disappointed with the weekend’s weather that they have decided to reschedule their annual Labor Day event.
“Two years in a row and it’s been questionable weather,” complained Schaumburg resident Josephine Davola.
The cool weather didn’t spike the third annual Beach Volleyball Championships presented Sunday on North Avenue Beach by the Sports and Social Club of the U.S. There were 126 four-person teams from 20 states competing in five divisions, yet visitors from warmer climates took the Windy City conditions in stride.
“Weather isn’t anything-it’s an attitude,” said Maria Villano, 30, of suburban Los Angeles.
But experience in the fickle Chicago winds must have paid off, since four of the five winning teams were local.
Still, the summer and Labor Day haven’t finished quite yet. The usual Labor Day parade in the Loop will give way this year for a workers’ march in the Pullman neighborhood to mark the centennial of the Pullman Strike.
The march begins at 11 a.m. at 111th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue.
The National Weather Service even predicts that temperatures will hit the upper 70s. But with considerable cloudiness. And a 50 percent chance of rain.
