ARCHIVING SUMMER...

Doesn't it seem like the more we have, the more we complain? Simple pursuits are ever cluttered with" stuff", rendering us unable to prioritize a number of daily responsibilities. Realistically, with the advent of time saving, the less time we have access to.

-And forget about thinking and deductive reasoning, as both are now (unnecessary)wasters of time. If any element of your life isn't directly linked to producing a bank roll, don't touch it. Pay someone else to take care of your yard, your home, (your declining parents who served as the wind beneath your own wings,) and even your offspring. You need to be scheming your next windfall. Smart people know how to purchase techno-tools or hire services to perform anything that needs doing.

I love spring and fall, as each provides a trademark style of "ahhhh" relief from harsher elements of their immediate neighbors. "AhhhSpring", freshly stippling a monochromatic winter-wrought palette with pinks, greens and yellows, the promise of new beginning; and "AhhhAutumn's" fond farewell to mosquitoes and sweaty lawn mowing, as wisps of orange, brown, red and gold in brief glory of flight, descend through brisk clean air, to unite with earth below.

While I was still working on my ABCs* and exploring such anomalies as butterflies, candle wax and time, I accepted without question permanent, immutable guidelines as handed down by my ancestors. An operating code that preserved innocence and faith in humanity. Somehow, the rules were invisibly tied to our efforts producing desired outcomes.

One such axiom was that you had to wear shoes to play outside all winter long and into spring. Even after pastel petaled spring signs were popping forth from all the formerly lifeless bush and tree limbs in your yard. Even with all the little baby birdies happily chirping the chorus of spring, you still had to wait until your mom told you it was the day your shoes could stay inside while you went out.

Ahhhh, but the wait always produced a sweeter reward, having been yearned for. There, in the center of eternal spring one newly bare foot would come to land upon soft prickles of freshly cut grass as above, a bluer world knowingly smiled down, canvassed by white puffy pillows of heaven. Ahhh.

"Shoes-off" day was an annual rite of passage. Because of an eternally long "shoes-on" season, the moment of bare feet connecting with bare ground was divine. We would soon forget that feeling, spending much of our summer unshod; but it was that first day of privilege, bearing such significance that in memory, will stand as a good thing.

The world of summer offered other unique opportunities. Neighbors would inhabit their lawns for reasons that didn't involve maintenance or aesthetics. Everywhere you looked, there would be humans, not in cars; but walking, waving, playing, laughing, talking. Perhaps due to open windows, screen doors and window box fans, which served as the most modern of "air conditioners". I don't remember complaining about the heat, not like now. Average temps today peak higher than back then. We have become acclimated to a man made environment, with all windows of our homes, cars, stores, efficiently shut, year-round. Sadly, we hardly noticed the eventual demise of drive-ins.

The fan in the window gave "ahhh"relief from otherwise hot, stagnant summer air. Much comfort and sweet dreams were produced by the ongoing drone of that little machine as it converted the object of our oppression into one long continuing lovely summer breeze. Little girls who dreamed of one day becoming famous singers would perch themselves directly in front of the window fan, to belt out the latest chart-topper from Johnny Mathis or Dinah Shore. It was there, within an inch of mightily whirring metal blades that a normally amateurish tone would be magically transformed into a professional style operatic trill.

We were more connected to our environment (before the invention of "freon-ized" AC,) and it was a good thing. The absence of closed home environments forced us to share life with weather, with all sorts of flying bugs, with other people, and with knowledge derived from incoming scents and sounds that we will never know again.

Summer evenings would usually bring people outside of their homes. And when it was the evening of the mosquito truck, you'd have thought the state fair had come to town! Lawn chairs, coolers, picnics, boys and girls on bikes, neighbors in happy alignment, all poised in anticipation of this special treat. At any time a low, distant rumbling engine hum would be detected, growing louder by seconds, until a huge whitish gray cloud-enveloped truck would roll ever so slowly past our house and continue on its way, thrilling spectators with every formerly visible thing becoming now obscured by mosquito fog (AKA, DDT). The more adventurous young bicyclists would take off behind the fog casting truck, to follow along and sustain foggy merriment.

The play of children was left to imaginings, so depending on who you hung out with, you either had fun or you were bored. Living in a neighborhood comprised mostly of NC State Univ. Profs and their families provided us kids with an extra measure of richness for scheming our play themes. There were classes, lessons and activities, but somehow they didn't dominate family schedules. There was no such thing as a shortage of time; and all children used time to wonder and discover without prompts. We made our own investigations, and drew our own conclusions, and it was enough.

We turned empty front porches into castles, bare picnic tables into feasts, swing sets into battleships, and wooden tables into horses. We discovered fools' gold and mica right there in our driveways, we sculpted beauty salons out of sand boxes. We made up theme songs and ate mayonnaise sandwiches. We propped up one side of cardboard boxes with sticks, placing a carrot underneath so that we might later discover a wild beast in captivity. We worked on learning to throw our voices and talked to each other with string-connected tin cans. We invented, we imagined, we pretended in glory.

If onions were available for our cooked-out hamburgers, everyone had to eat onions, or nobody could eat onions, as this prevented any non-onion eaters from experiencing onion breath from the onion eaters. How considerate.

Sadly, the Ahhh-feeling of summer is no longer so significant. Nowadays, the only people to be sighted out upon their lawns are mowing, watering or weed-eating. If a fellow motorist is traveling with windows open, it is pretty safe to assume that their compressor/condenser is out of whack.

All the while, glorious days of Heavenly summer live, in the hearts and memories of the DDT generation...Those of us who learned to continue our games of hopscotch when the occasional big sounding "BOOM" would rock the summer world, with WWIII still only a faraway imagining. Just another air flight breaking the sound barrier.

*add another item to my list of "OH NO!s..spell check tried to influence me to add an apostrophe to "ABCs!" Such wrongs are sustained, and will soon become standards. And there is nothing we can do to protest effectively.