June 29, 2010

• My friend, Christy Keirn, who is a faithful facebooker, posted a question: What do you miss most about being a kid in summer? She got some great, quick responses, but as is typical for me, I couldn’t let it go with one line. It got me to thinking back to my memories of summertime, to being a kid in a little town smack-dab in the middle of America…. 

  As it was for most kids of my day, playing was my primary occupation. I would stay outside all day long and play hard, from morning until it got too dark to see. I rode my bike all over our little town and up and down the gravel roads that led into it. I climbed in mulberry trees and, along with my next-door buddy, used our neighbor’s split-rail fence posts to build forts.

  We pulled Larry’s little wagon around the roads, looking for discarded pop bottles that we took to the little grocery store and sold for a penny a piece. All the time we were looking for the elusive pop bottles, we were figuring out how to spend all the money we were going to get….would we buy an orange pop or some kind of ice cream treat at the drug store? Or if we went there, the rack of comic books would lure us to open their covers…such temptation!

  One year Larry and I wrote a newspaper. For a few days, we gathered stories and promises of subscriptions; but it soon became too much like school, so our publication was a short-lived venture.

  His folks had the Western Auto, and summer sometimes meant a new ballglove from their store. Remember the smell of the leather, of breaking it in? If there was no one to play catch with, I’d throw a softball up on our house to catch it for hours on end. But it was so much more fun when we could get enough kids together for a game of work-up, played on the school’s dusty ball field.

  I spent a lot of time at my great-granny’s house where she kept me busy, picking gooseberries or blackberries or whatever was ripening in her huge garden. It was, of course, out in the hot sun, which is where berries ripen best. But back in her old farmhouse-in-town, the air stayed cool and a little fan stirred up a little breeze on the hottest days. She didn’t turn it on often…that would run up her light bill….just when it was real hot. What I really loved about Granny’s was snooping in her attic, but that was best saved for wintry days.

  Granny’s wide front porch had a swing and two big old wooden rockers. When my grandparents (Granny’s daughter) would come for their summer visit, we sat on that porch at night, watching the fireflies wink and listening to the grown-ups visit. Finally, I would coax Grandmother to tell me a story, and I would lie with my head in her lap on that creaking swing, lulled to sleep by her magical voice telling tales of fabulous make-believe, stories of little girls who could do anything…Grandmother’s way of telling me I could do anything….

  Our little town did not have much of a library, but I spent many summer mornings there, looking through ALL the books, trying to find something to read. I would bring home anything and everything, and often it was something inappropriate for my age. I remember reading Grapes of Wrath before I knew there had been a Great Depression. Pearl S. Buck became one of my favorites in those summers, and the scene in The Good Earth where the woman delivers a baby in the rice paddy and just keeps toiling made an impression on a ten-year-old that I’ve never forgotten. Magnificent Obsession, The Robe, The Keys of the Kingdom…all epics that I loved. When I brought home Tobacco Road, one of my mom’s friends noticed me reading it and removed it from my hands and said, “No! You’re too young for this!” Of course, that just made me want to read it all the more…

  Ours might have been the only little town in America without a swimming pool, but we did have Lick Creek, and we’d play in that as long as the water flowed well. But when it got too dry and the water became sluggish, Mom wouldn’t allow me near it. “Don’t go near stagnant water,” she’d say, “You’ll get typhoid.” We never knew anyone who ever got it, but we minded our moms.

  The long days of summer stretched on and on, but the monotony was broken by the Fourth of July. The very definition of this holiday for my family was PICNIC. We would have a major picnic! It was not a matter of going through a drive-through at KFC and getting a bucket of chicken and going to a park somewhere. Nosirree, it was a picnic of epic proportions.

  Granny kept chickens, so she would butcher several of them and fry up dishpans full of crispy goodness (Mom always said fried chicken was even better when it was left-over). She made wonderful potato salad (Dad said you could never get too much onion) and Grandmother made baked beans and homemade lemonade, a delightful treat reserved for only these special occasions, in a big gallon jar. 

  We would load up in our station wagon, roll the windows down and head for a special picnic place, different each year but always with water. We went to Tecumseh, to have our picnic under the Steel Bridge, or to Gamaliel, across the ferry, to a picnic area there. One time we went over to Shadow Rock Park at Forsyth, and another time to Beaver Creek at Kissee Mills. We swam, even all the grown-up grandparents, except great-Granny, who sat, napping, in the shade of her umbrella with her Clinkingbeard Funeral Home fan going. We kids took innertubes to float in the clean, cool water, working up a good appetite before the food was spread.

  And then, oh, the goodness! Along with the main dishes there were fresh peaches sliced in a sugary syrup, jars of homemade pickles, deviled eggs, and for dessert there was a big old watermelon, kept cold in the creek until time to cut it.

  It sounds as if all I did was play, but there were always chores in summer, too. Mom was diligent about that. I was the chief dishwasher (three times a day) and clothes-gatherer. She was particular about hanging clothes out to dry, so I didn’t have that job. But I could bring them in and fold them…VERY carefully (that diligence, again.) There was always a bag of sprinkled clothes in the refrigerator awaiting her iron. That was a hot job that I graduated to, at about age 13. Perhaps that was the end of my real childhood…

  Those long-ago days seemed so quiet and languid, with the buzz of cicadas coming through the screen to hynotically lull us to sleep at night. Summer lasted a long time back then…it seemed like it would last forever. But like all aspects of childhood, summer came to an end, and then it was back to school, back to growing up, and eventually summer jobs took the place of summer play.

  Summer on the farm is so busy now. We get up early, work hard, get a little rest, and do it all again tomorrow. But when it gets old, I take a little mind-vacation, back to those childhood days of play. How thankful I am to have had that smalltown experience! How I wish every kid today could have it…it seems like it was just about perfect…

  What do you miss about your childhood summers???

  • 8:24 am
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