My Relationship With Summer
It’s Complicated
Summers Growing Up - the Best
Summertime growing up was the best. I pretty much hated school my first 11 ½ years of it, so summer time was freedom from the classroom. It was also when my family went on vacation. Up until 1966, when I was 11, that usually meant to Uncle Roman and Aunt Lollie’s cottage at Pymatuning Lake, about an hour or so away from Pittsburgh.
It was a whole different world from Pittsburgh, there. That’s where I learned to fish, and got to know some great cousins. My earliest memory is of getting my nose broken right in front of the cottage by a baseball bat swung by my favorite brother.
It was an accident — I was 2 ½, and had asked him to hit one of my new, colorful balls all the way down to the railroad tracks. He didn’t realize that I stood right behind him to watch him hit it. When he swung that wooden bat — “Thwack” was the sound it made meeting the cartilege of my nose. Red was the color.
What I remember, besides floating around above my body for awhile before I regained consciousness, was the attention I got, and my cousin Janie consoling me as I cried hysterically. It was almost worth it for that. She said, “Don’t cry, Pete — big boys don’t cry. You’re a big boy.” I choked back the tears, and took that lesson to heart (one I’d have to unlearn many years later). My broken nose made me the center of attention the rest of that summer, and I loved being the center of attention.
Planning a Family Beach Vacation at 12
The year I was 12, I begged my mother to let us take vacation at a beach on the Atlantic Ocean. Pittsburgh was about a seven-hour drive from the nearest beaches, but I’d had a taste of beach towns when we went down to Atlantic City to pick my brother Chris up one year, then to Ocean City to pick brother Ken up another year, from summer jobs they’d had, working in those beach towns. It just seemed so cool down there. I loved the ocean from the first time I saw it.
She was back in college (at age 42), and said she didn’t have time to plan such a vacation. However, she told me that if I could find a place the family could afford, we could go. That was one of the best gifts Mom ever gave me. She empowered me to plan our family vacation!
From there, I was on my own. (Remember, there was no internet back in the 60’s). I looked at a map of the eastern seabord, and began writing letters to the Chambers of Commerce for each interesting looking and sounding beach town, from Connecticut down to South Carolina. I’m sure I sent out 20–25 letters. I eventually found a place in Virginia Beach we could afford (I even kicked in some of my newspaper route money to cinch the deal), and the whole family went to Virginia Beach for a week that summer, thanks to me. I was so proud of myself for doing that, and forever grateful to Mom for letting me.
Unlimited Freedom
Summer just seemed like a time of unlimited freedom. It was also when baseball season was in full swing. I loved baseball more than anything in the world. I had my own paper route from age 8 on, so I could afford to take the trolley into downtown Pittsburgh from our home in the South Hills (Brookline), where I’d get a transfer and take another trolley out to Oakland, where Forbes Field, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates was.
I started going to games on my own when I was 9. That was not unheard of back then. I knew my way around Forbes Field, thanks to an older brother (same one who broke my nose), and that became my own world in which I was in charge. I loved everything about that park, the game of baseball, and the Pittsburgh Pirates, especially my all-time hero, Roberto Clemente.
Endless Summers
The year I started drinking, when I was 15, summer was a golden time. I worked in restaurants, and went out drinking after work with fellow busboys and cooks. We got into all kinds of cool trouble, but had a lot of fun, just driving around the countryside during the days, getting wasted. When drugs entered the picture the next year, summer was even better. That summer seemed endless, like it would go on forever. I had so much fun.
Summer Turns
Summer kind of turned on me when I was 17. I spent the summer after high school graduation wanting to kill myself. I was in a whole new state, hadn’t been there long enough to make any friends to hang out with over the summer, and had just realized that I was probably an addict, and didn’t like that. After tripping for the prom and for graduation, I went straight, but just wanted to die all summer.
Summers were never the same after that, for me. The next year, I spent summer in Navy Boot Camp in San Diego. Summers didn’t mean a whole lot to me when I was in the Navy. All the seasons kind of ran together, then.
Summer = Hot, Humid, Mosquitoes
These days, summer might just be my least favorite season. Where we live, northern Virginia in the DC area, between the excessive heat and humidity, and prevalence of mosquitoes, you spend most of the summer indoors, away from the bugs and the heat. Fall and spring are exceptionally lovely around here, so they’ve become my two favorite seasons. By this time of the summer, I am daydreaming about fall. We’re hitting the patch of summer I call the doldrums.
The upside of summer here, especially late July into mid-August, is the traffic is at its lightest now, with Congress recessed and schools out. Usually, traffic volume is ridiculous, but it takes half the normal time to get into work. But, I still can’t wait for fall, and a break in this humidity.
Thanks Lucy King for this great prompt!
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