The Children of Summer

The following is an excerpt from my unpublished memoir Up on Downer, a story of growing up in the 1970s in a house filled with music and art and imagination on a street with a name which I thought at the time, caused all of us to be depressed. EH

There is a single expectant moment in each child’s life that is longed for through the endless winters spent confined to the schoolroom. A moment that lingers just beyond grasp throughout the greening spring. That moment is the second the last school bell rings in June, signaling the glorious freedom of summer vacation.

The walk home from the school, which lingers in winter with snowball fights and snow angels, on this day is announced by the flurry of pounding feet and joyful laughing, and can be followed by a literal paper trail of abandoned homework, test papers, and art work fluttering in the breeze like so many shorn fetters.

The plans for summer were always vast and uncertain. There were endless baseball games to be played, kings to be made, trees to be climbed, forts to be built, ravines to be explored, and friendships to be re-affirmed.

Time in summer passed at a different rate, and often seemed to stand still altogether. The hours drifted by like the clouds above, aimless, changing, and slow. With the arrival of summer came the arrival of the hot and humid Midwest weather. Parents wiped their brows against it, while we children breathed it in like the aroma of freedom.

With the exception of meals, our parents saw little of us. We left the house in the morning and were called home in the evening by our mothers. We ran to every destination, as if by getting there sooner, we could make the summer last longer.

After I was called home, Mom, Dad and I would sit on the front porch sipping cool drinks, listening to the falling silence and the pulsing of crickets, and awaiting the longed for gentle whispers of cool evening breezes to dispel the heavy daytime air. Summer on the porch was a time to cherish sunsets. The setting sun came late enough in summer that as it blossomed, exploded in color, and faded into starry night, I was already as tired as the day was long. Smelling the sweet aroma of newly cut grass, I could listen to the comforting murmurs of my parents and the sounds of water droplets falling from our sprinkler. I would nod off while watching the dances of mayflies and moths congregating around street lamps like living halos.

Summer thunderstorms came weekly, and were more violent and spectacular to a child then they ever have been since. Thunder crashed and lightning flickered as I peeked out from under blankets. Rain fell so thick that I thought the house would be swept away, and afterward, the smell of ozone would mingle with the delightful chirping of robins. Each storm was a singular event, and was as unlike the one before it as it was the one after. Storms were feared, as if tomorrow was not guaranteed, and I often thought that during an especially close strike of lightning, the entire universe might cease to exist.

For most of the summer, we were covered in layers of dirt, and our pants sported huge grass stains. Our new tennis shoes were full of mud, and if one came home not badly in need of a bath then one thought the day wasted. Gentle rains were vehicles of play, and every puddle had to be jumped in. Every tree was a measure of our manhood, and we climbed each available limb. Dandelions had to be picked and thrown at each other, lest the summer be wasted. Butterflies were chased, frogs and crawfish collected, and bugs of every type put into jars to be studied at leisure.

The grass in our back yard was thick and luxurious, and I still remember the tickle against my bare feet. Something about lying on the grass in the warm sun reading made every book seem better than if it was read indoors.

When Dad put out the sprinkler on a hot afternoon, the resulting frolic through the cold water was an experience never to be bettered. Every child in the neighborhood had a vast supply of balloons to be filled with water, and great chases and wars were commenced with giggling and screaming. There was nothing so satisfying in the entire world as a good supply of water-balloons in hand, except for possibly a pocket full of firecrackers.

We hoarded fireworks all summer in anticipation of the forth of July. We found them in area parks and the lakefront. Older people with less appreciation and more money dropped them while setting them off. No trip to the lakefront was complete unless a couple of bottle-rockets and firecrackers were scooped up from the grass and hidden away in our pockets. Every bang was cherished. Whole hours were spent planning and debating which neighbor would be the victim of a time delay fused cracker, or which of us would supply a treasured plastic model to be sacrificed to our unquenchable desire for explosions.

We packed pistols of the water variety, and each boy’s pants or shirt had a telltale stain of water to reveal the concealed weapon. We squirted each other, neighborhood cats and dogs, anthills, and even used the squirt guns as water bottles, drinking from the muzzle in the heat of the sun.

Time being endless, fresh and young, I spent whole afternoons searching every square inch of our backyard for four leafed clover, assured by my father that if I just tried hard enough, I could find one and make a wish. Dad, of course, knew that the longer I spent on my hands and knees in the grass, the more peace and quiet he was assured. To that effect, I was also paid a penny for every fly I killed around the house. I used a large rubber band knotted at the tip. Hundreds of flies met their death this way, but it never seemed to make a dent in their population, and I never got rich.

Once or twice every summer, we built homemade tents in the backyard, and with permission from Mom and Dad, retired to them with a stash of cookies and our trusty cork-gun, to spend the night safari style in the forbidding dark of the jungle. After several hours of darkness, the quiet of night would begin to creep over us and unknown rustling noises, bird calls, and things that go bump in the night would drive us to the safety of our bedrooms.

Sometime in August, we would begin to realize that eternity was not eternal, and that in a number of days carefully cherished and crossed off the calendar each night, we would have to return to captivity in the classroom. Once this point was reached, every day became an exercise in packing in as much fun as possible to last us through the long drought of learning ahead. The evenings became cooler, and the smell of autumn and books permeated the air.

Once back in school, the first task was to write a single page essay on what we did on our summer vacation. Despite an entire lifetime of living squeezed into three months full of adventure and discovery, we struggled to fill a single paragraph with anything that we thought mattered. What we never knew is that all of what was really important, was what we never wrote about; the precious trivialities of childhood in summer, which only later would be recognized as the greatest times of our lives.