Summer Time

Summer time.  Sum, sum, summer time. 

Yesterday, Walker told me that his summer was boring.  All the electronics, TVs, Netflix and his summer is boring. 

It made me spend a lot of time thinking about summer's past, when I was a kid. 

Our days always started early, with chores.  I swear, my mom lay ed awake at night and thought of chores.  If you didn't do your chores, you couldn't go to my aunt's to swim.  Incentive.  We worked like beavers.  Going to that pool, with our cousins was better than being on a cruise ship.

On rainy days, my mom would start her day at the kitchen table and talk on the phone.  The conversation would go like this, "I am so tired, I have no energy....well, nothing in this rain."

And somewhere between that line became a burst of energy that I never quite understood.  My mom would hang up that phone and she would yell, "take a shower, make the beds, run the sweeper and be ready in ten minutes we are going to the mall."  I swear, we got that all done and my mom would even throw something in the oven for dinner...all that with no energy.  Then just like clockwork, my aunt or Mona showed up, every time.  "Ripping" is what we named this.

When we didn't swim, we went to Summer Rec, translation, Travel Kickball.  We would walk the trail to White Valley School and play kickball.  I can still feel that rubber ball on my fingertips.  We played for hours and we loved it.  We played against other teams at schools and we thought we were the bomb.


Sometimes, we would go to my mamaw's for the day.  She would give us old bedspreads and we would clothespin them to the maple tree in the backyard and make a fort.  This was our house.  Some of us lived in that house and the others lived on the back porch.  We played house for hours.

Long before Pintrest was Linda Bahneman.  When my mom poured grape tang in a metal ice tray, I thought she was the most creative woman EVER.  Genius.  We would eat those wrapped in napkins and they would stick to the ice cube but we didn't care. 

We would pack our lunches and venture out on a hike.  This hike was a trail that went through the garbage dump and then we ate along side a sewage creek.  This was my brother's favorite journey.  The dump was home to discarded Playboy magazines.  My brother would bake in the son, surrounded by garbage to read what turn on's the Playmate of the month liked.  Nothing says fun like a garbage dump, centerfolds and rats.  But we went.

When we got older, my mom would let us walk to the Delmont Pharmacy, Home of the candy aisle.  And later, zit cream aisle.  This walk was through woods, empty fields, new construction, and took forever, three hours.  I never understood why my mom let us go.  Three hours of summertime solitude.  I get it now.

When my mom was in a good mood, she busted out the hoses.  The best,  water fights with hoses.  I love a good water battle with a long hose. 

Living in Pittsburgh, there wasn't a need for whole house air conditioning.  Thus, we had a window unit in my parent's bedroom.  This was key.  That single window unit guaranteed family time.  We would all gather in that room, in our jammies and watch Ed Sullivan, Disney, Mary Tyler Moore and Happy Days.

Jacks.  We sat on the cool concrete on our front porch for hours.  Onsies, twosies, threesies.  We each had our own pouch with our jacks in them, multi colored super balls and played were hours.  I loved jacks.  And, even though we sat on cool concrete, I never got a single hemorrhoid.

Barbies.  Just good old fashioned Barbies.  Not "corporate Barbie" or "Spray tanned Barbie", just Barbie, in her case and her dresses made from by mamaw.  Ken and Barbie always kissed and then we would shove a Kleenex up Barbie's dress and then we had "knocked up" Barbie.  Same routine but we were entertained.

And then there were sleepovers.  I can still feel the metal frame from Joan's pull out sofa bed in the basement and smell Patty T's bedroom.  We would listen to the radio, read magazines and call people on rotary phones, and actually talk to them.  Every time I hear, "the night Chicago died, " I think of summer.

And then we could drive.  The summer we could all drive, GREASE came out.  I piled tons of girls in the big black Cadillac and on my 8 track tape player, we would jam to GREASE.  Every song, every track.  We even pulled out the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack.  We drove around singing.  It was awesome.

Yes, I think Walker is right, his summer is boring.