Dog Days in Albemarle, Aug. 8, 1923

Dog Days in Albemarle Is a Let-Up Feeling

Albemarle Press

“Dog days” are usually fearsome days. Business feels like it has to letup at this season of the year; vacation feelings get into the bones; the diseases we don’t sometimes catch are a source of mental worry; intelligent boys and girls are home to add to the incidental expense of things or to take up jobs that the other fellow has been dependent on for a livelihood, and there is a general disorganized feeling during dog days. It takes from four to six weeks to thoroughly impregnate the system, and then with the first symptom of school days and the fall season, the lethargic begin to shake the dust from the old soiled clothes and whisk about for the new. The merchants dust off their sleeves and change the appearance of things—and pretty soon something begins to happen in earnest. The farmer is then ready to quit his work and to come to town on Saturdays, and if the marketing is good, the wheels of business being to hum. Just now in Albemarle, soda fountains and grocery stores are the main centers of activity—for it is a well known fact that the stomach is the last to be denied. When the germ of restlessness gets into the air the old fishing pole will soon be forgotten, that un-taken trip will be out of your mind, and your normal Albemarle takes on a certain air. But not so in dog days.

From the front page of the North Wilkesboro Hustler, Aug. 8, 1923. According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, the dog days of the summer of 2023 were from July 3 to August 11. The Dog Days of Summer are about a star called Sirius, also known as the dog star, that rises and sets with the sun during the Dog Days of Summer. They are usually the hottest and most unbearable days of the season.