Boy, six more days and I’m outta here . . . back to the real world! I’ve had it, ready to go . . . back to the real world . . . six days!”

“Where are you from?” (Boston? New York? Thailand?)

“Fall River . . . six more days!”

My check-out lady at the Stop and Shop is fast and cheerful, she’s the bagger as well as the checker; a lot of the young people have already left, and she can’t wait to be one of them. It’s goodbye to the Outback. “Thanks. Have a nice day!”

I am contemplating my own view of the winding down of the summer season. Folks say, how was your summer? Did your kids come? Did you get to the films, the ocean, the street fairs? Did you see the fireworks? Hear the band concerts? We answer yes, I think so. Summer? Have I had it? Where did it go? Just yesterday it seems we were running into our returning friends, blocking the aisles at Cronig’s, hugs and hollers, “When did you get here? Call me!” Now it’s September, and I am counting days too, like the young woman at the grocery. Different things: When does the ferry cost go down? How much longer will the boats come into Oak Bluffs? And the fast ferry from Manhattan . . . door to door to Oak Bluffs, for the very busy, or desperate souls who have two days to spend on the Island.

Do I still have time to check out the shops on Circuit avenue before they close? (I did get my grandson a T-shirt that said I Jumped Off the Bridge at State Beach.) In the paper I read the ads of galleries and artisans gatherings and openings and restaurants under the arbors that I never got to . . . and won’t.

Well, let’s go on out to the Galley and get a hamburger and sit on the rocks. It will close soon. And the Menemsha grocery is having it’s half-price closing sale (40 per cent if you’re listening) and a few days ago I got some very strange stuff. Peculiar condiments, rice, quick foods. We go to the Right Fork Diner at Katama — it’s nearby, there’s parking, good food, nice people, and an air show that is nonstop on sunny days. It will close in October, for another year. We sit out on the deck under an umbrella, and eat whatever, it doesn’t matter. (Well, it does, I get fish and Ted orders a scary-looking huge brioche covered in syrup and eats it all.) But it’s about watching the little planes take off and land, right under your nose; one bounces down the grass runway, revving up; it looks like a model airplane, the kind we grew up with, but it isn’t — it’s up there, and gone, out of sight in a minute. On a sunny day, there are a lot of takeoffs and landings, several planes taking turns. A couple sitting at the next table has just flown over from Newport to have lunch on the Vineyard. Takes around 20 minutes, said the young man, give or take. (About what it takes me to find a parking space in Vineyard Haven.) Flying to lunch! “Are you going up?” he asked. “I did that already,” I said (like in the forties).

When I was a kid, my mother and I went up for a ride at a small airfield in Louisville. The only airfield at the time, Bowman Field, was a busy place, managing all the traffic for our city. (Including training wartime glider pilots away over the open fields). And where famed speed-pilot Col. Roscoe Turner and “wrong-way” Corrigan once landed — no security: You could walk out on the tarmac and sit in their cockpits if you wanted. The Derby brought many notables. And there were pleasure rides for visitors. Mom and I held hands and our breath as we flew over the Ohio River bridges, the parks and highways, (we were convinced we saw our house) and came in low over trees and a farmyard — just like Katama — where we looked down on the chickens running in all directions as we leveled off. Mom and I never forgot it.

That’s all for now, it’s sunny out with a clear blue sky, and we have to make some sandwiches, pick up a friend at the ferry and go to the beach (with some sweaters). It’s not winter yet! Afterwards, and most importantly, we must get our almost-daily supply of sweet corn at Morning Glory Farm. It’s staying open late this year I’m told.

Gazette contributor Jeanne Hewett is a freelance writer and fabric artist who lives in Edgartown.