Knees locked, pedals loaded, legs ready. Sun, high noon. Sweltering, heavy, humid, Ohio heat. You’ve known nothing less. You are from here; you own this place. This is your town, this is your bike, you’re eleven and you’re ready. You’re on your off-brand Walmart “Huffy” and concentrating on the lift offs your father gave you a few years ago when he was teaching you how to ride a bicycle.
Right foot first, down and around the circumference of the gear. The left is next, following the lead of the first. Your ligaments in unison on this man made contraption. The weighted metal careens forward across salty asphalt and gravel, the same mix that has marred your shins so effectively the last few summers. You consider the fate of falling, but keep pedaling forward, your tiny legs defying gravity to procure a speed beyond any you have ever achieved. Pulsing shins and pain shooting up your calves. You stop breathing but fail to realize. You find yourself barrelling down an alley and know the traffic ahead is deadly (but not as deadly as your momma yelling at you for going into traffic) so you jolt the bike left, fix the pedals; the back tire skids. You put the bike down on your left side, sure that the rubber handle grip hits first. From your knee-high sock to the base of your Goodwill jean cargo shorts there is a two inch solid roadburn intertwined with hair and sweat that begins to bleed. Little speckles shimmer in the sun. Your helmet is completely forward and down over your glasses. Blood, sweat, and summer. This is your 1999 accomplishment. This is all that matters.
When I was a kid, I organized time into physical blocks in my mind. They organized themselves not around the typical calendar year, but rather the fulcrums of June through September. Summer’s beginning and end.
The good month, it was light and happy. My dad would leave at dawn to go build things in the world and my mother would sit and read with all the windows open. Our orange cat lazed on the back of the couch, staring at the cars passing. It wasn’t too humid yet, the air flowed through the white curtains with ease. My mother’s cigarette smoke wafted up and formed rings of Jupiter cloud dust in the air. The morning news quietly playing in the background from our little television.
“The cold front from the north and lake effect winds bringing with it rain. Look for humidity next week. Today, we’re looking at a beauty, get outside while you can, folks.”
Tom Raper RV commercials. Paul Sherry car liquidation sales. Rite Rug. Shitty lawyers selling DUI bailout services. The news comes back on. There was a fire, there was a murder, someone robbed the bank. Local news is local news.
I stared at the smoke rings and the dust that hung in the air. The sun rose through the tree out front and speckled the curtains with tree branch and leave shadows. The block of morning news time was almost over and Regis and Kathie Lee time would be next, followed by the syndicated game shows, and then my favorite, the Price is Right. I was always the best at guessing the prices. I was obsessed with the prices. I was most excited when someone won a car. We never had new cars.
June was easy, because the summer was just starting. I had the time to sit and stare out windows and listen to the television and not worry about having enough time left. The mornings would wane and my mom would make us hot dogs, or bologna sandwiches with apple slices. When my dad would get paid, we’d have Chef Boyardee ravioli or cheese filled hot dogs. Those were my favorite; I used to eat around the edges like I was a minor looking for gold.
After lunch, Mom would kick my brother and I out of the house.
“Go play, it’s beautiful out!”
We’d play with our Jurassic Park dinosaurs, they would hunt our Star Wars action figures, and eventually, the Gi-Joe calvary would swoop in and save the day. Dramas unfolding on our back porch, storylines developed, whole summer seasons better than any summer blockbuster we never got to see. The neighbor kids would hear us screaming and carrying on and eventually all end up on the porch or in our yard, playing with us. These were the good times. We didn’t know we didn’t have anything; we were happy playing in the dirt until dad came home.
It was always 5 o’clock on the dot. My dad’s green S10 puttering up to the curb. He had been in an accident and had to replace the front fenders and bumpers with a purple version from another model he found in a junk yard. He called it the Dinosaur truck, because he knew we were too old for Barney. We’d run to the curb when we heard his broken muffler howling down the block. Our neighbors must have loved us. My brother and I would jump up and down screaming in glee. He’d get out and we’d all run inside. His clothes would be covered in drywall mud and dust and he’d always sit on his big blue lunch box in the kitchen and take off his boots.
He and mom would talk about his day, and I’d sit quietly on the floor listening. So and so didn’t show up for work, he had to cover someone’s job, electricians held him up again, superintendent got on him for not using safety harnesses. There was always some drama. Mom would always contest he didn’t get paid enough. He’d talk about the talks he was having with one of the construction workers about jumping ship and forming his own company.
Then dinner would be ready. We didn’t have a kitchen table then, because my dad was in the middle of renovating our little house, so we ate on a towel on the floor. My brother and I next to the fish tank. I’d sip the milk mom gave us and chew on Aldi brand chicken patties and off-brand French fries while watching the fish in the tank. The plachostemas sucking on the glass and the goldfish moving back and forth slowly. We had to eat everything. There weren’t other food choices in the fridge. We didn’t know that, we thought it was how people lived. It was a good meal; I liked the ketchup and watching my brother pout and not finish his meal.
The red glow of an Ohio sunset would flow through the back door and through the kitchen. We’d finish the meal, and I would do the dishes. I logged 25 cents in my chore book upstairs and came back down to watch television with my parents. The evening news, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air re-runs, Dharma and Greg reruns. Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy! Dad was always the best at Jeopardy! The network prime-time shows, then bed-time. Bed-time was the best.
We had bunk beds in our tiny green room. We had old Star Trek and Star Wars posters from my Dad’s childhood on the walls. A tiny yet overflowing bookshelf took up the corner. There was an old chair with a thick cushion that had German prints of little towns and workers all over it. Dad would read to us every night until we fell asleep. Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Ray Bradbury, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Charles Dickens, and the rest.
I liked the novel The Horse and His Boy the best. I liked imagining the desert. It was so different than anything in Ohio. With its lush humidity and grass everywhere. I had never been anywhere else. Heck, we hardly even went to the next town over. My block was my kingdom, and I would end my day the first born prince of a construction Saltan with dusty boots and shaggy brown hair. Dad was an old school nerd who knocked up an art kid in college and made a life with her in a small city in western Ohio. Working construction by day and filing our minds with fantastic lands that existed ages ago and galaxies away each night.
The town library ran a book club in the summers. You’d log hours and eventually toward the end you’d rack up enough credits to score little trinkets from behind the checkout desk. The basement of an old Victorian mansion housed the children’s and young adult sections. We would go every Wednesday, piling into our big blue station wagon and making the five minute trip into the downtown of Piqua.
I was partial to the science fiction section. I didn’t like horror or mysteries, my imagination worked too well. Once, in third grade, I passed out because the teacher was reading a Goosebumps novel and the antagonist had blood coming from his fingernails. I became so light headed at the idea that it was possible to bleed out through your fingers that I passed out. When I came to, I was so embarrassed I had to run to the bathroom and hide. No, science fiction was much better for me. Besides, space is way cooler than bloody fingernails.
I read every Star Wars book I could get my hands on. I would spend my afternoons in July swinging on our wooden bench swing, reading about how Han and Leia had kids, and about Luke’s wife and sons. The rebellion building a new Galactic Republic and the Sith always up with their trickery. I loved the space battles, the description of how huts change from male to female, IG-88 and the bounty hunters, how Boba Fett used a thermal detonator to escape the sarlacc pit. There were other novels, but I remember the Star Wars ones most fondly. This was my time, my silence, and my space. Mom left me alone, my brother would play across the street, and my dad was away fighting battles against the dragons of capitalism so we could have steak once a month. If those were what they call salad days, then by golly, I’d give anything to go back.
July always slipped through the cracks in my mind. I was comfortable. It was hot. Too hot to play like in June. I wore shorts, tank tops, sandals. I spent hours riding my bike up and down the alley. I read. I mowed the lawn once a week and logged $5 in my chore book. I picked up dog shit in the back yard for $1.50 in the chore book. I did the dishes every night and logged it in the chore book. I wanted a computer. My dad told me he’d match me half-way to the total cost of an HP at Walmart. It was $600 all together; I knew I needed to make at least $300 by September. It came with a monitor and a printer.
Our house had a little air conditioner near the front door that remained off for 11 months out of the year. The exception was August. We always knew, even without the aid of the calendar that I checked religiously, when it was August. Mom would sigh loudly and exclaim “It’s hot!” Followed by a grunt and her leaning over the phone table to adjust the knobs. She would wave her hand in front of the vent, finding the right level of blow. I swear the freon in that thing had to have been used up ages ago. The model could have been 30 years old, for all I knew.
With glee we’d run through the house closing windows. My brother always needed a little extra help with the front windows. They were heavy and always stuck in odd places. I took care of those. After this task was complete we’d huddle together in front of the vent breathing in the semi-cool air.
We stayed inside in August. We went to the Piqua Pool in August. We sat on the front porch waiting for dad’s Dinosaur Truck sucking down the freezie pops mom would splurge on at Kroger and we’d tell stories. The humidity sticking everything together. I remember sitting on the concrete, always a bit sad because I could feel the days sneaking closer and closer to the looming school year.
Haircuts on the front porch on a high metal chair. Constantly sweaty. Trips with grandma to the mall for new school clothes and shoes. Mom always told us we had to make them last the entire school year. I always did. Even if the Nike sneakers had holes in the sole by May, I always made it through. Now, I wear my Chucks until holes form in the soles. I never buy new clothes. Sometimes, growing up, we’d get a knock on our front door in August and we’d open it up to find bags of brand name food and good shirts and pants from Kohl’s that someone from the church left for us. I never remember feeling good on those days, just guilty.
That summer we had two dogs. A mutt named Cephus and a yellow lab named Bo. We had to keep Bo chained up to a pole in the backyard because he would dig under the fence and run away. Bo ran around in circles all the time, chasing birds. His sinewy legs wearing the grass thin. His circle around the pole became deep.
One weekend we built him a house. We used metal studs as the frame and OSB particle board for the siding. We shingled the roof. I remember using a nail gun to install the shingles myself. We painted it white for Bo and placed it near his pole. He’d sit in it next to his water bowl panting, a smile on his face.
On a particularly hot afternoon Bo’s bird chasing got the better of him. We were inside soaking in the air conditioning, sucking on freezie-pops while he ran in circles. This time he caught the chain on a root or a rock or something and the chain failed to freewheel. It wrapped. It only took minutes and he was pinned by the neck to the base of the pole. His water and his house only feet away. His humans, inside, unaware. Cephus barked in concern, but we didn’t realize that’s why he kept barking. Bo sat there, all afternoon, in the high August heat.
Dad came home that night and looked out the back window. He asked why Bo was laying there panting, and then he hurriedly yanked the door open. He ran and grabbed the hose to bring him more water. Bo lay his head in my Father’s lap and tried to drink. My dad sat there with Bo all night. We weren’t allowed outside.
We never kept a dog on a chain again. We moved the house over to the shadiest part of the yard for Cephus. We put water out for Cephus every hour, whether he needed it or not.
Everything ends. Summer always came to a close. My chore log book had about $150 in it. I felt like a failure. One Friday after school, Dad picked me up in the Dinosaur Truck. This was odd, he never was off work that early. We drove from the country school I attended and into the city 5 miles south of Piqua, called Troy. We went to the Walmart and we walked the aisles. I was quiet. We made our way to the center of the warehouse store to the electronics section. Past the video cameras and big televisions, past the Playstation and Nintendo 64 units, all the way to the small corner in the back left of the section where they kept a few low-grade desktop computers.
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