School always let out a week before Memorial Day weekend, and by the time Saturday rolled around, I had written my list of “must do” things for the summer.
I was a kid, of course, so my priorities changed several times before I finished the list. By the time it was complete and I had hidden it behind the secret drawer in my desk to keep my pesky little sister from finding it, the page was covered with eraser marks and the dates and tally of each thing to do had changed at least once.
Trips to Big Rock, our local swimming hole, stayed at the top of the list. I figured twice a week during June and July was about right, with a third trip added in to make up for missing out on the Fourth of July when our family got together with several others for an all-day picnic and fireworks after dark. We weren’t allowed to go swimming in August. That was Dog Days and people got sick.
Another item at the top of the list was getting a job so I could buy my own supply of fireworks: Cherry bombs and three-inch firecrackers mostly, high explosives to satisfy a typical 12-year-old boy’s appetite for demolition.
Mostly I mowed lawns, horsing cranky cast iron lawn mowers through ankle-deep grass for a few dollars a week. It was hard, sweaty work, and only the thought of blowing things up kept me going.
Bicycle rides with the guys were on the list too. I figured 50 of them including 10 nighttime sorties with only twinkling stars for company, and at least one five-mile trip to explore the cave at the edge of the Ritterbush farm that we had missed out on the previous summer.
There were backyard games, too, the dusk-to-dark kind that ended only when moms called from the back door to come in for bed. I figured once a week for games.
Not on the list was one special evening when me and another guy couldn’t find anything to do and we wound up sitting on the front porch sharing sacred thoughts we’d never told anyone before.
The week before Labor Day I checked the list and found it wanting. Rainy days and tummy flu always short-circuited the schedule, and I underlined the few urgent things I deemed essential.
Everything ended on Labor Day, of course, and Tuesday morning it was new clothes, stiff shoes and back to school.
I still make a list of things to do during the summer. And it’s still only half done by Labor Day. Only now the kids have been back in school for weeks. And I haven’t blown anything up in years.
