I am not a fan of summer. Not at all. I don’t like hot. I don’t like bugs. I don’t like night being overrun by daylight. Every year I count down the days until summer ends. The best thing I can say about today, the first day of summer, 2024 is that tomorrow we’ll be as far away as possible from the first day of summer, 2025.
It hasn’t always been this way. Part of my distaste, I’m sure, flows out of the too many years I lived in Florida and summer nearly year round. Another part is the adult chores that come with summer. When, however, I was young, those burdens weren’t a part of summer. The more I think about it, the more I miss those summers. Here are ten reasons why.
1. Baseball. When I was a kid I played in two different leagues, spent hours playing with friends, and either watched or listened to my Pittsburgh Pirates who had a great run during my childhood, winning two World Series and winning their division several more times. I have too much respect for the game to try to communicate its glories in prose.
2. Camping out. We had roughly twenty acres of woods behind my house. One or two nights a week my friends and I would hike a few hundred yards to our camping spot, light up a fire, make smores and watch the stars. It was like Stand By Me, but without the bullies and the dead body.
3. Fishing. I’ve never been a deep aficionado of fishing. But that doesn’t mean I never found joy in it. Mr. Campbell owned the neighboring property and had a lake. My friends and I would lug our tackle boxes and Zebco 202s to the banks of that lake and spend an hour or so seeking bass. If we succeeded we feasted. If not, we moved our hooks closer to shore and found our fun catching and releasing blue gill. Do kids still do this? Do they know how to put a bobber on a line, to bite a sinker closed? Have they removed fish scales with a fishing knife, or washed the pungent smell of fish offal from their hands?
4. No school. Goes without saying.
5. Watermelon, and spitting seeds.
6. Rainless thunderstorms. Oh mercy these were something else, a safe yet dazzling fireworks display from the living God. And, on a smaller scale, the whimsical dance of fire flies. And in between, fireworks on the 4th of July, or after a ballgame at 3 Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh.
7. The Fireman’s Fairs. Each summer several of the local volunteer fire companies raised money with fairs. Part small-scale county fair, part Monte Carlo Night, part country style rave, these kaleidoscopes of music, games, rides and cotton candy were mesmerizing.
8. Thursday nights at the Ligonier Valley Study Center. These community gatherings began with grilled hot dogs, covered dishes, Texas sheet cake, moved on to softball or volleyball and often ended with s’mores around the fire. This experience of koinonia shaped my soul.
9. Pool days. A few days each week I was sent off with my peers, and the bigger kids, equipped with two dollars. Such got me into the public pool at Idelwild Park and a lunch of a hot dog and a root beer.
10. Cool evenings in late August- the sure sign that even better days were coming.
Do you miss anything from your childhood summers? Camp? Strawberry shortcake? Let us know in the comments. Happy first day of Summer.
Under #2, I was going to add bad language of the kids from Stand By Me, but that’s a rite of passage for boys, maybe even for a Sproul. You don’t have to answer, but if you have friends like the ones from the movie, you were indeed blessed.
It’s one of my favorite movies.
I miss drive-in movies. We went often on summer weekend nights. Mom would pop enough popcorn to fill those old black and white speckled roasting pans, pack a cooler full of drinks, and off we went. My brother and I always wore our pj’s and took blankets and pillows. We’d start off sitting on the hood or roof of the car and always try to stay awake to see the second feature— but usually fell asleep.
I only went once as a kid. We saw Song of the South and sadly, went home before the second feature, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Are there any drive-in movies left in the US? Nothing like that here in the Philippines.
Number 5. The round watermelons found here, are not good tasting, just bland, not sweet. My brother back in the US, said the stores there sell mostly the round melons, which do not taste good, like the sweet ones back in our childhood.
During my childhood, our favorite campground was Camp LuWiSoMo, located in heavily wooded central Wisconsin. We always bivouacked near a shallow lake, surrounded by a peat bog and deep forest, and always saw salamanders.
While camping one warm summer evening, after the last rays of the sun faded away, a light mist rolled in, and drizzle wet the ground. A peculiar incident was poised to take place: Night of the Salamanders. We never experienced anything like it before or after. Salamanders by the thousands came out of hiding and began their rampage, swarming everywhere and on everything. They carpeted the ground, a living moving slimy hoard, an indistinct mass of feet, eyes, and tails; a leaderless army, not heading in any particular direction. You needed to be careful where you stepped. Two young girls collected buckets of the deranged amphibians (not sure what they planned to do with them). As we sat around the campfire, people had to lift their legs to let those critters pass, as they scurried to their doom into the fire. We had to make sure our tents were zipped tightly. Many campers didn’t and had many unwanted guests that night. By the next morning, the rampaging host had vanished and never assembled again.
I think I have an idea for a blockbuster monster movie…