Monday Moanings - June 20, 2016

Those were the days





You know it's going to be a hot one, when the A/C kicks in at 5:30am. By 10:30 this morning it was already 29°C (84°F). Unlike her prior siblings, Summer has rushed her entrance onto my doorstep, arriving a tad early and overheated.

Her usual entourage of bugs - black flies, mosquitoes, deer flies, and ants - are all present and accounted for. Even the "Bobbsey Twins", high humidity and poor air quality have shown up.

No doubt about it - Summer is HERE!




I would have preferred a kinder, gentler approach, a gradual ramp up to the eighties and nineties. Actually I'd really love a summer of 22 - 25°C with only occasional forays into the mid-eighties and above; intrusions that are brought to a swift end by a ring tailed snorter of a thunderstorm. Great flashes of lightning followed by ear splitting, room shaking, gut vibrating booms that rumble on for minutes it seems and rain, torrents of rain that wash, quell and replenish the earth - there is nothing like a good summer thunderstorm.

 

As a kid I loved the summer... 

Hot! Hot! Hot! So hot the tar bubbles up between the pebbles on the road; round, shiny black globs. I can smell the tar - acrid gasoline fumes rise up from the road surface. My flip flops stick haphazardly as I walk; sometimes a step is unhindered, other times the foam sole sticks then releases raising fine black strands of gooeyness. Round flat, black globs decorate the bottom of my favourite summer footwear. I scuff over to the lawn hoping the grass will wipe away the sticky tar. It's futile. Now I have flipflops with green grass clippings stuck to them...

Mom July 1971 - backyard party

Happy days indeed! Wind in my face bike riding, 5¢ popsicles, 10¢ ice cream cones, Coppertone® sun tan lotion (no sunscreen), big circulating fans swirling in the windows (A/C back in the day), family bbq's and a backyard pool made summer an absolute delight.



We didn't have a heater so a pool freshly filled in June began at 16C (or less!) and crawled its way to a blistering 23 by mid August. Those were the days of Fahrenheit, so "Arthur" our pool thermometer actually registered 74. One banner year I recall ''Arthur' made it all the way to 78F. In the early part of the season, while Dad was at work, Mom and I added buckets of hot water to the pool. Dad came home, splashed his hand in the pool and announced, "It's warming up nicely!" Mom and I just smiled.

Those were the days...




©2016 April Hoeller