Wow! Summer has arrived! The crumb crunchers are out of school, the pool is open and the temperatures are on the rise. This will be the first summer my girls will not be in summer school. 3 months of hanging out with dad!
I used to love summer time when I was a kid. My sister and I were what was called latchkey kids, meaning we were usually home alone when school was out while our mom worked.
My summers were filled with days of skateboarding, bike riding and tadpole hunting. There was a creek near our neighborhood called Boggy Creek in which we spent many hours collecting tadpoles, frogs and turtles. We ruined many a pair of sneakers in that stinky creek.
I lived in an area that did not have any swimming pools so my friends and I did not do much swimming. My best friend did have a trampoline though and we spent hours playing on it. We would play dodge ball on it and on hot days we would put the sprinkler under it and jump on it wet.
The things I remember most about summers in the 70's were the locusts and their loud noises. There were some nights that they were so loud you could barely sleep. I remember sleeping with the window open most of the summer and having a fan planted right next to my bed.
Summer was the signal it was time to "cut off" that winter pair of denim jeans. We used to cut the legs off as high as we could so we would have the coolest pair of "cut offs". You usually had to wash them at least once before wearing because you wanted to have the best collection of threads dangling from the cut off area. Another ritual was to cut the bottom off your favorite t-shirt which made it a half shirt. Man were we styling with our half shirts and "cut offs".
We didn't watch much TV in the summer because we were always running around outside. We would also skip dinner just so we didn't have to stop playing. And what about that 70's craze called streaking? I have to admit that we might have streaked along Broadway Street once just to say we did. Glad we didn't have cell phones with cameras back then.
Speaking of cell phones, we never had a way of being found and never knew what time it was. This was a big bone of contention when a parent needed us for something. There was no way of finding us! What freedom that was.
Well, more about my summers days as a youth later. Get out there and enjoy the sun!
Labels: 70's, Memories, Summer
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