Summertime

        I love Summertime, both the season and the song.  I’ve never heard a bad version of it, but Doc Watson’s is my favorite.       

        I don’t know how it is up North, but here in the South it is a regular heat wave.  As the old bluegrass joke goes, it is so hot when the dog chases the cat both of ’em are walking. 

        I expect even the frozen tundra has thawed out.

        But unless this global warming thing goes any further, I’ll have to say I still love summer.  When we were kids we’d get up and throw on a pair of shorts and spend the whole day outside.  Sunscreen had not been invented.  (Which is why I go to the Dermatologist once a year now.)  We weren’t poor, and had plenty of money for shoes, but we went barefoot just ’cause we wanted to.

        Near the house there was an abandoned field where we played ball.  At the end of the field there was a “cliff.” (When I went back to look last year it turned out to be but a small incline.)  After you got nine or so and could hit a home run every time, you had to bat left handed.  Once you could hit ’em over left handed you got to go out for Little League.  One of our best players was a girl, and they wouldn’t let her try out.  I didn’t understand why.  She couldn’t hit it quite as far, but she was an excellent fielder.  For us it was a democratic game.  Everyone had different skill levels, but we all got to play. 

        As we got older, and there were more home runs, we’d often lose the ball in the honeysuckle vines on the hillside of the “cliff.”  That honeysuckle smelled sweeter than perfume.  There was also a blackberry patch, and we’d eat wild blackerries and honeysuckle while we searched for the ball.  We had to find it, ’cause we only had one, so the game would not resume till we did.  And if you cracked a bat, you’d nail it back together and then wrap it real tight with black tape to get to the end of the season.  The kids who play ball now carry an assortment of equipment in those pro duffel bags miss a bunch of fun.  We never lacked for a thing, but could not be that extravagant and had to make do. 

        After we got older we could go to the Park to swim, and I think it cost about a dime.  They had a chain link fence right in the middle of the pool to cordon off the deep end.  I guess we had some emergencies, but I don’t remember that anyone ever drowned. 

        Then we got into golf.  It was an extra fifty cents but you could play all day for that.  We didn’t know how to hold the club, much less play.  The only good player we knew was Arnie on T.V. and we all tried to swing like him, but none of us got that good.  We dug the game out of the dirt the best we could figure.

        For me summer is bluegrass music, and home made ice cream.  It is pretty girls (though now I only I answer to two, my wife and daughter) and Nat King Cole (“Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer”) and Al Hirt (“Java”) on the hi-fi all one summer. 

        At this age, I like summer ’cause old bones and muscles loosen up and the golf ball flies a little further, and it is still all music and laziness.  It used to be the whole town shut down for Wednesday afternoon.  That tradition has died out, but we still don’t work as hard in the summer, even in the doctor business.

        I tried the best I could to make summer that way for my kids in spite of this crazy modern world, and when I have grandchildren I think I’m gonna be worse.  I see it as my responsibility to make sure they know about honeysuckle vines and home-made ice cream.  And I want to teach ’em a little mandolin or banjo.  It wouldn’t be fitting to grow up in the South any other way.

Dr. B

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