Summer Draws to an End

With schools around the country having either already started up, or beginning within the next few days, summer is at least beginning to draw to an end. As I look back over the past few months and wonder where the summer has gone, this summer, more than any other in recent memory, reminded me of the summers of my youth when every day was clear, sunny, hot, humid, and it never rained.

Some of my earliest childhood memories of summer are of my siblings and I running around the back yard, weaving in and out of a sprinkler. Running around in circles, alternately squealing and laughing and darting towards the ice cold sprays of water, and only at the last minute jumping over the swinging sprinkler arm.

As I got a little older and too cool to hang out with the "little" kids playing in the water, some friends and I would walk to a field and hang out in the shade of a giant willow tree, taking turns sitting in an old tire suspended from a giant low hanging limb with an antique and fraying rope. We'd push each other higher and higher until we were tired of pushing, then we'd just sit and spin and sway in whatever breeze might be available.

ISO 400 ----- 60mm ----- f2.8 ----- 1/80

Once I reached high school age and became too cool to hang out on a tire swing, I'd wait for the weekends and anticipate the arrival of relatives that would come over for a barbecue. I'd stand in the backyard and play catch with my cousin Wayne while the adults sat at the big picnic table and talked and enjoyed a cold beer. We'd listen to the Red Sox play the Yankees on the radio, and everyone would curse Thurman Munson, Craig Nettles, Chris Chambliss, Micky Rivers, Oscar Gamble, Sparky Lyle, and Ron Guidry, and we'd all cheer for Fred Lynn, Jim Rice, Rick Burleson, Carlton Fisk, Rico Petrocelli, Carl Yastrzemski, and Luis Tiant.

Now, I sit on my own porch, enjoying my own cold beer, and smile as I watch my own kids run around in the yard, darting in and out of the sprinkler and laughing hysterically every time they get wet, as if they thought they were going to be able to avoid the streams of water shooting in every direction from the flapping arms of the purple octopus staked into the ground.

I think that next year, I'll put up a tire swing.