It's June. The tourons have vanished, Hurricane season's arrived, and soon it will be World Crocodile Day
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It’s June! The tourons have fled and the streets are so deserted you could fire a cannon down the Tamiami Trail and not hit a single Rolls Royce.
Some explanation may be in order.
I live in Southwest Florida outside the city of Naples, one of the ritziest towns in a state littered with wealthy beachfront enclaves. To be clear, I don’t live on the water and my ride’s a Toyota.
But during “season,” the six months of the year that the local population balloons with wealthy snowbirds, the Bentleys, Lambos, Astons and, yes, Rollses clog the roadways. And the golf courses, restaurants, and beaches are flooded with these temporary residents.
Then they vanish. They can’t take the heat, and they’d rather not weather our hurricanes, which meteorologists say we’ll have more than usual again this year what with global warming.
We call these wealthy intruders tourons, a mashup of the words tourist and moron, not only because they can’t figure out how to return their shopping carts to the Publix parking lot corrals or because their luxury sedans seem to be missing turn signals. There’s a skosh of envy, too.
Now that they’ve flocked back north—some (the Canadians) never to return—things have quieted down, the thermometer is percolating into the nineties, and we’re waiting for this year’s first cone of uncertainty.
Speaking of which, here’s this year’s list of hurricane names:
Andrea, Barry, Chantal, Dexter, Erin, Fernand, Gabrielle, Humberto, Imelda, Jerry, Karen, Lorenzo, Melissa, Nestor, Olga, Pablo, Rebekah, Sebastien, Tanya, Van and Wendy.
Hopefully, those names will be enough, although twice this century so far the National Hurricane Center has had to scramble to find additional ones.
June is more than the start of hurricane season, of course. The first official day of summer will arrive soon, Father’s Day is around the corner, and Flag Day and Juneteenth are coming up. June is also Pride Month, Adopt a Cat Month, and Accordion Awareness Month—although, if you ask me, it should be Accordion Bewareness Month (childhood trauma story there).
Mark Your Calendar
In this newsletter’s continuing quest to ensure you have all the conversational ammo you need to be the smartest person in the room, here’s a list of dates to keep in mind:
June 1 is Oscar the Grouch Day. Cool trivia: It wasn’t until Sesame Street episode 3,866 that it was revealed that this is Oscar’s birthday. He doesn’t celebrate it, though, because, you know, he’s a grump.
June 2. American Indian Citizenship Day. I wrote about this in my Florida Weekly column, but it bears repeating:
On this day in 1924, Congress, comprised largely of white guys of European extraction, decided to grant the country’s indigenous population citizenship. Hard to imagine it took so long or that they weren’t always automatically citizens because, not to put too fine a point on it, THEY WERE HERE FIRST.
June 3. Here in the Gunshine State, we have several appalling holidays, and this is one of them. It was on this day in 1808 that Jefferson Davis was born. Yes, it’s a state holiday. We have two other Confederacy-themed celebrations as well: Confederate Memorial Day and Robert E. Lee’s birthday. So, yeah, Florida, it’s not all Mickey Mouse, cruise ships and Miami Vice. It’s still the Old South.
June 4. Remember those shopping carts I referred to earlier? Well, it was on this day in 1937 that inventor Sylvan Goldman introduced the newfangled devices at his Humpty Dumpty store in Oklahoma City. Eighty years later, a Florida vigilante nicknamed Mister Manners, began punishing shoppers who left them scattered in parking lots. You can read all about that here.
June 5. The NBA Finals—finally!—begin today. The games will be broadcast on ABC and its affiliated streaming services.
June 6 is D-Day, the anniversary of the 1944 English Channel crossing in which Allied forces of Great Britain, Canada, and the United States launched the largest amphibious assault in history to retake Europe from Adolph Hitler. The armada involved nearly 7,000 ships and landing craft and 156,000 troops.
There’s this apocryphal story:
A German lookout on one of the Normandy beaches couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the armada offshore. He called his skeptical commander stationed elsewhere in France.
Lookout: “The Allies. They’re here.”
Commander: “It’s probably a diversion. How many ships are there?”
Lookout: “All of them.”
June 7. National Black Bear Day. Here in Florida, the creatures were nearly extinct until conservationists persuaded the government to ban hunting. Now it’s estimated there are more than 4,000 roaming the woods, swamps and trash cans of our state. So many, in fact, Florida has now created a new bear hunting season. It’s deja vu all over again.
June 8. The annual Tony Awards will be handed out tonight and you can watch the ceremonies live beginning at 8 p.m. EDT on CBS. The nominees for Best Musical are Buena Vista Social Club, Dead Outlaw, Death Becomes Her, Maybe Happy Ending, and Operation Mincemeat. For Best Play, the nominees are English, The Hills of California, John Proctor Is the Villain, Oh, Mary!, and Purpose.
Here’s a complete guide to all the nominees.
June 9 is Eat Flexitarian Day. It’s for people like me who agree in principle with vegetarians but have no plans to give up their hamburgers. It’s a cool name, so tuck it away in case of emergencies. For instance, if someone asks you what religion you are, you can toss out: “Oh, I’m a Flexitarian,” and enjoy the puzzled look on their face.
June 10. For all the writers out there, today is Ballpoint Pen Day. Personally, I prefer a fountain pen, but to each scribbler their own. BTW, the ballpoint pen was invented way back in 1888.
June 11. International Lynx Day. A lynx is a kind of wildcat found mostly in northern and mountainous regions. The Canada lynx is North America’s most common type. Canada lynxes are now boycotting the U.S. because of Trump’s suggestion he wants to annex their country.
June 12. Today is the first full day of the U.S. Open Golf tournament. This year it’s being played at the Oakmont Country Club in Pennsylvania. You can spend the next three days watching it on NBC or you can get a life. Your choice.
June 13. International Ax Throwing Day. According to the never-wrong internet, there are now at least 360 ax-throwing bars and venues in the U.S. There’s now a World Axe Throwing League with more than 20,000 members. Edgy.
June 14 is a very eventful day. For starters, Pope Leo XIV will be in Chicago for a huge public celebration of the new American pontiff. There will be music, film, testimonials and prayer.
It’s also Flag Day, commemorating the adoption of the Stars and Stripes as this nation’s flag in 1777 amid the Revolutionary War.
There will also be “No Kings Protests” in cities around the country focused on fighting authoritarianism—precisely what the Revolutionary War was about.
And, finally, it’s Obama Appreciation Day.
June 15 is Father’s Day. In honor of this sacred celebration, the five best dad jokes of all time:
Which days are the strongest? Saturday and Sunday. The others are weekdays.
Why are your pupils the last part of your body to stop working when you pass away? Because they dilate.
What did one flag say to the other? Nothing. They just waved.
What’s Forrest Gump’s password? 1Forrest1.
What’s blue and not very heavy? Light blue.
June 16. National Take Your Cat To Work Day. Don’t ask. I have no idea. I just report this stuff, I don’t make it up.
June 17. World Crocodile Day. Worldwide, crocodiles kill about a thousand people each year. They’re maneaters. Why they should have a special day is beyond me. Cool bit of trivia though: It is only in the Florida Everglades that both crocodiles and alligators co-exist.
June 18. Buy a copy of Florida Man Day. Okay, okay, I do make up some of this stuff.
June 19 is Juneteenth, a federal holiday, Juneteenth celebrates the ending of slavery in the United States (much to Jefferson Davis’s disappointment). It was on this day in 1865 that word of the Emancipation Proclamation arrived in Texas at the end of the Civil War.
June. 20. First Day of Summer also known as the summer solstice. To be clear, this is what the calendars say, but there is disagreement between astronomers and meteorologists on this subject. Astronomers note that this is the date on which there are the most hours of sunshine in the northern hemisphere. Climate scientists, however, measuring average temperatures, insist that summer really starts on June 1.
June 21. National Selfie Day.
June 22 is World Rainforest Day. While the U.S. has temperate rainforests in multiple parts of the country, the only tropical rainforest is in the El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico.
June 23. National Hydration Day. Water is good. About 70 percent of the Earth’s surface and human bodies are made of water. Running low? Combine one atom of oxygen with two atoms of hydrogen and—voila!—you got H20.
June 24. Lightning Awareness Month. Lightning is great at providing the energy needed to combine oxygen and hydrogen atoms into water. But it’s bad for your body. Try to avoid it. PRO TIP: Shelter indoors during thunderstorms, don’t stand under trees, and get out of the water. Also, under no circumstance should you hold a golf club in the air and boldly declare: “Not even God can hit a one iron.” She’s a better shot than you think.
June 25. Color TV Day. On this day in 1951, CBS broadcast the first show in color featuring among other celebs of the day Arthur Godfrey and Ed Sullivan.
June 26. A good night to check out the Bootid meteor shower as the skies should be dark with a new moon.
June 27. The anniversary of Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump that sealed the end of his presidency and, many argue, paved the way for Trump’s second term of office. Yeah, it’s only been a year, but it seems like forever.
June 28. INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY. IT STARTED AS A JOKE IN 2000 BY SOME DUDE IN IOWA. MAYBE THE DUMBEST HOLIDAY OF THE YEAR.
June 29. The anniversary of the iPhone is today. It was introduced in 2007. Hard to imagine a time when we didn’t all have smartphones in our pockets.
June 30. On this day in 1936, the novel Gone With the Wind was released. It recounts the tragedy of southern belle Scarlett O’Hara whose fabulous plantation lifestyle is disrupted by inconsiderate Yankees who think slavery is a bad idea. Jefferson Davis to the rescue, but to no avail.
Letters
Dear J.C.
That line you used at the beginning of this newsletter, the one about shooting a cannon down the Tamiami Trail? Why does it sound familiar?
E. Mahoney
Can you plagiarize yourself? I don’t think so. Anyway, I used that line in one of my novels, maybe Get Strange or possibly Strange Currents, I can’t recall. So, if you remember it, that means you read at least one of my books, so thank you. Now read more.
Dear J.C.
How can you not remember which book you used that line in? And, besides, wasn’t the most memorable line in Strange Currents this one:
“I knew my number was up when the flamingo stepped on my face.”
And didn’t it win a big award or something?
A. Kitchner
Well, of all the odd situations Alexander Strange has gotten himself into, lying flat on his back in Duval Street in Key West while getting stomped by a panicked flamboyance of flamingos has to be one of the weirdest.
And, yes, it was a winner in the Best First Sentence Contest sponsored annually by the International Thriller Writers.
Dear J.C.
You didn’t answer Kitchner’s question. How come you can’t tell us which book that line is from?
L. Rivers
God, I can’t get away with anything with this crowd. Let me just stop everything that I’m doing (which is typing this) and look it up.
Okay, I found it. It was on page 207 of Get Strange. I hope everyone’s happy.
Dear J.C.
So, what have you got against accordions? I’m referring, of course, to that snide remark you made earlier in the newsletter about Beware of Accordions Month.
L. Welk
I have this haunting memory of when I was a little kid, maybe five years old, in some dimly lit living room with lots of people milling about, relatives I suppose, and an old man sitting in a wooden chair with an accordion and someone, maybe my mother or grandmother, insisting that I sit at his feet and listen to him squeeze-boxing away. It sounded like he was strangling hamsters to my young ears. I kept trying to get away, and somebody kept putting me back. Then I remember crying. So, yeah, real trauma, PTSD level. Ruined me for accordion music, if you can call it that.
And if that story tugged at one of your own painful childhood memories, here’s what you can do:
Become a Paid Subscriber to this newsletter if you aren’t already. All proceeds will be donated to the Help J.C. Bruce Recover From His Accordion Trauma Foundation.
Thank you.
Parting Shot
J.C. Bruce is a journalist and author of The Strange Files series of mysterious novels (available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, other online booksellers, and at selected libraries). He also writes this monthly newsletter. He holds dual citizenship in the United States of America and Florida, and was recently awarded an honorary doctorate from the Lightgate Institute of Extranormal Studies, which he totally made up for his book Strange Timing.
TROPIC PRESS, publisher of The Strange Files series of mysterious adventures, is pleased to also be the official publisher of J.C. Bruce’s new novella, Scribbles From Space.
We just saw "Good night and good luck" on Broadway and it something we all need to see at this critical time in our country. If you aren't panning a trip to Nyc, CNN will live stream the play for their final performance, July 7, and streaming on Max.Dont miss it!
Very creative!!!