Summer's prelude

Beneath the deep shade just beyond a Capaha Park playground, a woman, perhaps a mother in her late 20s, sat at a picnic table, her sunglasses holding the hair off her face. She was watching two boys, about 5 or 6 years old, chase each other through the sun-splotched grass. Then a paternal-looking man with a goatee walked up the hill carrying a bag of goodies: cold bottles of water and soda and some ice cream drumsticks. In a different section of the park, baseball play-by-play could be heard from an open car window. Earlier, an elderly woman named Maxine Zickfield (above), who has lived near Capaha Park for 40 years, tended to the blossoms at the rose garden. Over on Good Hope Street, a woman wearing shorts sat on her front porch talking on her cell phone and smoking a cigarette. If this weekend marks the unofficial opening of summer, then Wednesday performed as a worthy dress rehearsal. On Wednesday, for the first time in 2006, it was hot in Southeast Missouri. The high temperature reached 88 degrees, just warm enough to make shade preferable. The National Weather Service is predicting highs near 90 through next Wednesday. Storms are possible today.