Summertime

Everyone else seems to be writing about childhood memories of summer, so here goes:

We had no air conditioning, I spent a lot of time going "ahhh" in front of the fan to hear my voice sound funny. Early in the morning when it wasn't too hot we'd sit on the porch and listen to the birds, look out over the fields and smell the hay. I also spent a lot of time running in and out of doors getting popsicles from the huge freezer in the basement. I thanked my mother a few years ago for never scolding me, no matter how many popsicles I ate. We also got to go shopping at Aldi with mom all those summers back, and we got to pick out, oh probably 12 cans of soda and that lasted 12 days, 14 if we were really holding back. I usually got 4 of each, cola, root beer, orange (whistle) and lemon lime. Nothing tasted as sweet as those cans of soda hoarded in the crisper in the late afternoon. I always watched Days of Our Lives with mom while she folded laundry during the only break she seemed to take each day. I hopped around ran and sang, visited the horses, talked to the cats, the dogs, everything that seemed to be moving about. Sometimes I helped in the garden, but mostly I just grabbed a few strawberries and kept running. Occasionally we got to run through the sprinkler, but I remember more "sorry it hasn't rained and we don't have enough water" than sure, go ahead. There wasn't much on tv til late afternoon and then I'd hop up every commercial and sometimes miss half the show because I'd wandered outside. After dinner when the sun was going down, I'd often ride the horse, talking to her like she was human, chasing flies off her back. If we were lucky, there would be popcorn and a 16 oz glass bottle of REAL Pepsi split three ways. I could stay up a little later because I didnt' have school, but usually I was tired enough to go to bed pretty early. By the time I was old enough to have friends with cars, we'd spend a lot of time driving around the neighboring towns square, cause even if the boys weren't cuter, they didnt know us either. I ate a lot of taffy and drank a lot of soda. We dreaded the end of summer, but couldnt wait for SOMETHING else to do. We also had the county fair and sometimes state fair to attend. Between Jr High and High School on Saturday mornings I trained pups up at the fairgrounds and at show time the dogs always got a vanilla ice cream cone passed through the sliding glass of the old F150. I also hid in my room reading books again and again, daydreaming and wishing that summer would never end.