“And it was summertime
Sweet summertime, summertime”
It is summertime, it made it once again. Summer is a great season wherever you spend it. In the northeast, Midwest, southwest deserts, in big cities, small towns, it doesn’t matter. Summer is not only a season, it’s a special way of life for a few months.
It brings back memories, of camping trips, vacations, Boy Scouts, summer camp, traveling, working in Maine, working in Montana, being in downtown Chicago for the 4th of July, camping on a beach in Mexico, trips to Hawaii, Utah, Michigan, Wisconsin, California, Oregon. Weddings we’ve been to, a wedding proposal, a first date, meteor showers, concerts, lazy days, and days at the beach, spending time with friends and making new ones.
One of the greatest Rock n’ Roll songs ever done reminds me of the summer of ’69. It’s the one that starts out with the cow bells and drums, Honky Tonk Woman and the Stones always takes me back to the Lions Club Pool, in Homewood Illinois. I think we spent the entire summer there, day swims, home for lunch, and then back for the evening swims. Biking it back and forth. Schwinn Stingray biking it at that, on a blue machine with ape hangers, banana seat, and five speeds. Bryan Adams had his band in the summer of ’69, we had hurling ourselves off the high dive all summer. Who knows what that means. You couldn’t pay me to get on a high dive now, but I could do a cannonball and jackknife with the best of them then.
I still love the summer. In Phoenix summer is a different type of beast, but there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s light at 4:30 in the morning, and already heating up. We don’t get the late, late evenings like Maine, Michigan and Oregon, where it is still light at 9:00 at night, and that’s a shame, because that is really cool. We do get great monsoon storms later in the summer, which have tremendous cloud build ups, gusting winds and torrential rains. We also get days on end of over 100, over 105, and sometimes over 110. Yes it’s a dry heat, but as they say, so is a convection oven. It’s hot, that’s all there is to it.
One of the great advantages of the summer heat is turning off the water heater, and still having hot water. You can also leave a cup of coffee in your vehicle in the morning, and when you leave to go home in the afternoon its’ hotter than it was 8 hours ago! Now that can’t be done just anywhere you know.
So it’s time to turn down the volume some, relax, read, take more naps and plan some travels. “Cause its summertime, sweet summertime.
