This time of year I always think about long ago school vacations when my family moved to a cottage at the lakeside picnic grove they operated during the summer months. Just about everyone remembers how the last school bell of the year heralded what might as well have been an eternity of freedom even though it was less than three months. And though that was an illusion, in retrospect it sometimes seems like those summers, filled with new experiences, did last longer than entire decades later on.
Life at the lake was different than life in the suburbs. To begin with, there was the tiny cottage with electric lights but no indoor plumbing. A hand pump in the yard supplied water that was ice cold and pure, without the chemical taste of the town water to which I was accustomed. There was an outhouse a short walk from the cottage. It reeked sharply of the pink disinfectant cakes sitting here and there. A small ragged hole at the base of one wall showed where a porcupine had gnawed to get at the salt in the wood.
Yes, even going to the bathroom could be an adventure, especially at night, following the flashlight beam along the flagstone walk, alert for prowling porcupines.
The frogs in the creek were exciting too. The creek ran behind a bed of bergamot which filled the air with the aroma of Earl Grey Tea. Hummingbees (as we called them -- actually sphinx moths) hovered around the red flowers looking so much like hummingbirds they didn't trigger my usual aversion to large buzzing insects. I'd make my way through the flowers and hunker down on the bank learning to spot the twin bumps of amphibious eyes poking out of the water like periscopes. I mastered my frog catching technique, positioning my open hand so that I could close my fingers around the frogs' extended legs when they sprang towards safety.
Not that they had anything to fear from me. No frogs were harmed in the making of this memory. I always released them.
The stream was a whole world of wonders. Crayfish rocketed backwards in clouds of mud when I lifted the rocks they hid beneath. Numberless minnows glittered in the shallows and in the slow moving water near the lake floated black clouds of baby catfish. Sticklebacks built pebble nests while water striders skittered across the stream's sun flashing skin and dragonflies darted through the air.
There was plenty of non-aquatic life. A chipmunk made a habit of rambling around under the family picnic table looking for crumbs while we ate. At night bats squeaked and swooped so close you could feel the rush of air as they flew by your face but never colliding with you, and never eating the lightning bugs that twinkled around the edges of the yard like an out-of-season Christmas display. The bats knew the bugs were toxic.
Four-leaf clovers for luck were to be found in the lawn but I found more honey bees with my bare feet, which was not lucky at all. Worse yet were the blood sucking leeches in the lake, undulating alien horrors resembling elongated bits of raw liver. (I found liver almost as horrible as leeches.)
The natural world didn't have a monopoly on amazing new experiences. I hunted along the roadside and amid the tables in the grove for empty soda bottles discarded by careless picnickers. They were returnable and the few cents I redeemed each for added up to more than my allowance every week. The general store where I took the bottles featured a remarkable display of dead and dying flies stuck to coils of flypaper that hung from the ceiling, twisting slowly in the breeze from several large fans.
One summer, the Purple People Eater was another unforgettable novelty. My parents were under strict orders to call me whenever that Sheb Wooley number popped up on the radio and I'd come running even if I was catching frogs by the creek. I'm not sure any other song has affected me as deeply.
Nor have I ever experienced a quest as exciting as my successful effort to collect every Davy Crockett trading card, the card completing my set being, memorably, "A Bullet Finds Its Mark."
And that barely touches on the fascinating new world those ancient summers offered to a grade schooler. I didn't mention Fudgsicles, Fourth of July sparklers, thunderstorms, tadpoles, grilling
No wonder summers seemed so long.
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