Welcome back, Summer

You can tell that it’s Summertime. You don’t need a calendar, a temperature gauge, or a slightly hyperactive, bright-eyed weather girl on channel eleven to break the news to you. Officially, it might not begin until the twentieth of June, but trust me, summertime is already here. You can feel it. Everything just kinda slows down, starting with the traffic. School buses have disappeared, and the Tiger Trail 500 Raceway has finished up its season, so now you won’t feel like you’re in the pole position at Charlotte Motor Speedway whenever you head down South Main for a morning cup of coffee or you’re caught in the after-school Burger Barrel Rally and Chicken Fingers Drag Race at three in the afternoon. That’s a good thing. We can all appreciate a little slow-down, and summertime is supposed to be sort of a lazy time anyhow. It’s like the old song says, “summertime and the living is easy”. Well, let’s be honest. The slower pace is fine, but when the temperature bounces between the high 80’s and the low 100’s for three or four months, some folks might argue that the living nowadays isn’t all that “easy”, and when you add in the 90 percent humidity that weighs you down like an old wet blanket, it can get downright challenging. It seems almost unbelievable now, but in the summers of my childhood, most homes and downtown stores didn’t have air conditioning. The few businesses that did have a.c. proudly announced it with large signs in their storefront display windows. Large rotating fans and old, reluctant ceiling fans were the standard of the day. Summer nights were the domain of wide-open windows, box fans and screen doors that were never locked. A pump sprayer full of Black Flag took care of the mosquitos and the low hum of the old window fan lulled you into never-never land. Summer days were spent either on your bicycle with the wind in your face or at the city pool, and if your allowance held out, you could enjoy the air conditioning at the Dixie Theater. All in all, it was a pretty wonderful time of the year back then. I guess it was hot, but we didn’t really fuss or fight against the weather; we just found ways to co-exist with it. The only thing we really fought was the calendar as the declining number of summer days rapidly melted away.

If you have friends or relatives in other parts of the country, they probably don’t understand what summertime in the deep South is truly like. But I suppose that can be said of all of us and all the different seasons in all the different regions of this land. It’s all about where you grew up, and it all has to do with the special memories and the unique attachment we have to the concept of “home”. I will always remember my childhood summers as a great adventure. Was it as hot then? Well, without getting into the climate debate, I will just say that I think we all have the right to be a little lazy and do whatever we can to conserve our energy down here, at least from Memorial Day ‘til Halloween. How’s that?