Started preparing my classroom for the new school year this week. I keep thinking that summer is waning from view quicker than I would like and yet I look forward to fall, especially after enduring extreme heat this week. I thought today about how when I was kid, I never gave a care to the heat in the summer time. My days were so full of great adventures, I didn't have time to worry about whether I would glow, glisten or full out sweat. Thinking about summer as kid reminded me of summer at my grandfather's house. He would come for a visit and then say to me, "You better come and go home with me, Kymbo". I waited on each word he spoke before that sentence, hoping he would invite me to go home with him. Grandpa's house was summer splendor wrapped in songs of crickets and watermelon slices with a dash of salt.
Grandpa and I would sit out in the front yard and practice our casting with the fishing poles. "Take it back to 10 o clock and release it at 2:00". Over and over we cast our lines into a pool of sweet green grass. The work from the practice created quite a hunger which could only be satisfied with homemade vanilla ice cream covered in Hershey's chocolate syrup from the can. My grandfather was quite the trend setter with his electric ice cream maker. He was the only guy on the block with the new model, which was the topic of conversation at the current Canasta game my grandmother held earlier that day.
In the evenings after dinner, we would walk through the back yard to the old barn where grandpa would keep his grape vine twine. We would tend to his grape vines and then sit on the swing in the back yard, listening to the rhythm and hum of the crickets. Some nights, I would catch fireflies in an old Mason jar and grandpa made sure there were precisely four air holes in the lid to ensure they show would last into the late hours of the night. As we would head into the house, he would remind me that morning was a long way off and we might need a little snack to hold us through the night. We always had a slice of watermelon and let the juice drip down to our elbows. If the watermelon needed time to settle in our bellies, chinese checkers was a required pre-bedtime amusement. Grandpa had carved the board himself and bought marbles for it at the Woolworth store in town. He called the game, "Wahoo" and to this day I still call chinese checkers by that name.
I never had trouble falling asleep at grandpa's house. Everything about grandpa's house was magical to me, even at bedtime. Nothing plagued my mind but the soft lights from the fireflies and the whir of the air conditioner. In the morning, I woke to grandpa listening to the farm report on the radio at the kitchen table. He would say, "Well hello there, Kymbo. I was just getting ready to make some breakfast. I bet that watermelon has left your belly by now". After breakfast, the adventures of the day began again. What would it be today? Whatever the choice, it was always something memorable, always something worthwhile, always something magical no matter how mundane to others. The summers seemed to have no end then and now they fly into yesterday, quicker than they came. I think I might go out into the kitchen to find a slice of watermelon to hold me through until breakfast...

Sorridere sempre