August is upon us and the heat
around the world is something else.
People hide in their homes or their cars, wherever they can get air
conditioning and relief from the heat.
It’s too hot to wonder about climate change, global warming or any of
“that stuff”. Comfort in summer, that’s
what we want.
It takes me back to summer days of childhood when the Yummy Man rode his bike around the neighbourhood, ringing his bell and we would all hope that our moms would buy us a popsicle or maybe even an ice cream cone. Sometimes Dad would give us a nickel to go to the gas station to buy a pop. But most often we would have either Koolaide or Freshie as our drink of relief. Freshie was a little cheaper to buy than Koolaide so we almost always had Freshie (they tasted exactly the same, full of sugar).
Moms were home and kids roamed the neighbourhood, playing in backyards that were not fenced in so we flowed from one house to another and beyond the backyard there was a huge field that was full of flowers, bugs and butterflies. The grass would get high so we could play hide and seek or just plain old play “stuff”. At the end of the field on one side was the start of the school grounds, edged by trees many of which were apple trees. We loved playing there during the summer and there was virtually no one else playing there but my siblings and our chosen friends. We could play there all day and only go home when Mom called us. We did not need supervision or anyone to give us ideas to create our fantasy worlds. We had so much imagination there was never enough time to play out all the stories we had going in our heads. Detectives, cowboys, circus performers, African safaris, Tarzan, movie stars, mothers, jungle animals and horses, there was a never ending array of stories to be told. We morphed from one theme to another one day and the next it was one long saga from morning to supper time.
Mom would send us off with a picnic lunch and the other mothers were quick to follow her lead. “What a great idea” they must have thought as they filled up a pop bottle with koolaide, made peanut butter and jam sandwiches. The day we learned about cinnamon spread was a day to remember and after that Mom would make peanut butter and cinnamon spread sandwiches. Oh how good they tasted. Maybe we had an apple or banana in the bag but rarely anything else, not even a cookie. But we were too busy to think much about food.
Ah summer days.
It takes me back to summer days of childhood when the Yummy Man rode his bike around the neighbourhood, ringing his bell and we would all hope that our moms would buy us a popsicle or maybe even an ice cream cone. Sometimes Dad would give us a nickel to go to the gas station to buy a pop. But most often we would have either Koolaide or Freshie as our drink of relief. Freshie was a little cheaper to buy than Koolaide so we almost always had Freshie (they tasted exactly the same, full of sugar).
Moms were home and kids roamed the neighbourhood, playing in backyards that were not fenced in so we flowed from one house to another and beyond the backyard there was a huge field that was full of flowers, bugs and butterflies. The grass would get high so we could play hide and seek or just plain old play “stuff”. At the end of the field on one side was the start of the school grounds, edged by trees many of which were apple trees. We loved playing there during the summer and there was virtually no one else playing there but my siblings and our chosen friends. We could play there all day and only go home when Mom called us. We did not need supervision or anyone to give us ideas to create our fantasy worlds. We had so much imagination there was never enough time to play out all the stories we had going in our heads. Detectives, cowboys, circus performers, African safaris, Tarzan, movie stars, mothers, jungle animals and horses, there was a never ending array of stories to be told. We morphed from one theme to another one day and the next it was one long saga from morning to supper time.
Mom would send us off with a picnic lunch and the other mothers were quick to follow her lead. “What a great idea” they must have thought as they filled up a pop bottle with koolaide, made peanut butter and jam sandwiches. The day we learned about cinnamon spread was a day to remember and after that Mom would make peanut butter and cinnamon spread sandwiches. Oh how good they tasted. Maybe we had an apple or banana in the bag but rarely anything else, not even a cookie. But we were too busy to think much about food.
Ah summer days.
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