Summer Memories

     It was a perfect summer day today – warm but not hot, low humidity and plenty of sunshine with a nice breeze. It reminds me of those great summer days as kids, barefoot, playing in the cottonwood trees behind our house. Mom would occasionally be persuaded to mix up a little Kool-aid in a quart fruit jar, and she would make us bologna or cheese sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper (no plastic wrap or sandwich bags back then) and let us carry them up to our hide-away to have a picnic lunch, perhaps with a cookie or two.

     If you are familiar with cottonwood trees, besides shedding “cotton” fluff, they have a characteristic “rattle” in the wind. It was fun to lie in the grass under them, listening to that rattle and watching the clouds scudding by. Of course, we didn’t get to spend all day playing, there was plenty of housework, laundry, garden chores, cooking and canning all summer. Back then, those were considered tasks that prepared children for adult responsibilities, and I have been grateful that I learned them, but not always back then, when summer called. I was very proud of my “overalls” that matched my Dad’s carpenter overalls – plenty tough for playing hard and working.