According to a recent Associated Press story, the traditional retirement hot spots no longer are hot.
“That’s the old view of retirement,” said David Savageau, the author of Retirement Places Rated. “And it’s kind of dying out, the desert Southwest and South Florida. That was for our parents.”
While I question the use of the phrase “dying out” when discussing retirees, his opinion is echoed by the editor of Where to Retire magazine.
“Boomers and retirees these days are considering a much wider range of destinations for retirement, often choosing states that don’t commonly come to mind, such as Maine and Montana,” Mary Lu Abbott said. “Yes, the Sun Belt remains popular, but many people prefer a four-season climate and enjoy the changing of seasons.”
With all due respect to Maine and Montana, I don’t understand what’s so wonderful about the changing of seasons. Most of my life has been spent dealing with the changing of seasons, and I’m getting real tired of it.
Every time a season changes it means packing up this season’s clothes, hauling them down to the basement or up to the attic, then unpacking next season’s clothes and hauling them to the closet. With all that packing, unpacking and hauling, who has time to enjoy the change of seasons?
Besides, when most people talk about the change of seasons, I suspect they’re mostly thinking of this time of year, when Mother Nature turns leaves to glorious shades of gold and red. That lasts about a week. Then they fall off and all those glorious shades of red and gold clog your gutters, which means you have to clean them out before Mother Nature changes seasons again and dumps three feet of snow on top of them.
The only change of seasons I look forward to is when winter goes away and takes all its soggy leaves and lousy snow with it. But even that isn’t so great because the day after I’ve packed up all my winter clothes and replaced them with spring clothes, winter weather slinks back for another week or so and all I have in my closet is Bermuda shorts and T-shirts.
But for those of you who are change of season fans, feel free to move to Maine or Montana. While you spend your days hauling clothes, I’ll be driving to the golf course — with my turn signal on.
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