Ten years old would have been 1976 for me--so July 4th was definitely spent at the golf course adjoining the stadium (where everyone stretches out their blankets to watch the show--the only thing you miss out there are the ground firework displays, set up on metal frames).

Typical summer days at that age during the week would have included playing with the dog in the back yard while reading in the sun, riding my bike over to my friend's house a few streets away, and then, in the late afternoon, heading over to the park to play, hang out on the swings. Oh, and try to catch crawfish in the creek behind the park while cooling my feet in the water. I didn't have a watch, but I knew it was dinner time when I heard my dad's whistle (which was audible for a five-block radius--handy substitute for a dinner bell in those pre-cellphone days).

I'm trying to remember if the local branch library had opened when I was 10. I think it opened after I was 12, but after it did so, I'd take my bike down to the strip mall it was in at least twice a week. I was reading short romances by then, and I managed to get through most of the library's stock of them by the end of that first summer, and the next year I got myself a weekly babysitting gig for the librarian's two girls.

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Heather, your summers sound exactly like the summers I used to fantasize about as a kid; I'd read To Kill A Mockingbird and Member of the Wedding over and over and wish I had relatives in the deep South I could go and spend my summers with. And all my fantasies were nearly precisely everything you've just described. If you also skinny-dipped in a local creek and raised a pet raccoon or squirrel or possum from a baby, then that was it exactly.

t /dorky, dream-ridden kid

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It's weird that I can't really distinguish different summers by year. I know I went to drama camp at Tufts when I was pretty little, between 1st and 2nd grade, maybe? There were a bunch of summers with Y day camp, at least one with nerd day camp, I don't know what else.

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Out in the hills, the near-constant hum of miscellaneous insects, rising to an occasional clicky crescendo

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the intense buzz of the cicadas up in the pines.

The weight of heat, the animal pleasure of lying in the backyard right on the hot concrete, sunlight bearing down and sapping away everything but a pleasantly stoned torpor;

Mmmmm, heat....

barns for my Bryer horses (usually they had several hooves broken off).

JZ had a bunch of Bryer horses too.

There was one woman who always asked us to pray for soap opera characters.

Heh. Great detail.

This meant mango eating contests,

When I got older it meant mango daquiris.

me running clubs in a thinly veiled stab at controlling them all,

tactfully doesn't mention b.org

stealing the older cousin's porn and reading it in a mixed group,

Ahhh, stolen porn is the best. I shoplifted The Happy Hooker Goes Wild from The Treasury when I was about 12.

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If it weren't for my dad's gig, I wouldn't be able to tell summers apart that well myself. 1979 means he was still stationed in Jamaica -- and Warren and Tracy moved away the summer we visited him in the UK (1980), so I'm just throwing people and what we usually did together.

There was undoubtedly a beach trip in there somewhere -- to Turtle Beach or Fisherman's Cove? Couldn't tell you. Either we stayed at the resort in Ocho Rios (and probably climbed the falls) or we were in Port Antonio, playing where the bamboo-fringed stream met the ocean, at the base of rocky cliffs.

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I shoplifted The Happy Hooker Goes Wild from The Treasury when I was about 12.

My parents had The Happy Hooker -- I found it when we moved, so I must have been 8. Eight is not an age of great patience, so I never made it to the porn. Emmanuelle and Candy gave it up much more quickly, but mostly we stuck to the pictorial stuff (the simple stuff -- Emmanuelle was the movie novelisation, but we couldn't make head nor tail (intended) of the pics, so stuck to the words).

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Raccoon, yes. Her name was Mandy. We caught her with a device Grandandy taught us to build. I can't remember if we skinny dipped or swam in our clothes. I know my younger cousins- they weren't around when I was 10, they're only pre-adolecent now- skinny dipped in my dad's cousin's above ground pool recently (they live across the street- dirt road- from my grandparents).

You must make it down to Dallas, or I have to make it up to SF so I can invite y'all down there. We even have an extra trailer now for guests. It used to be my uncle A.C.'s and it's just next to Mimi's.

Mimi and Grandandy's [link]

My aunts Becky, DJ, and Patsy at the lake (in ascending order). [link]

My uncles Bobby, Johnny and Don at the lake- with bonus Casey (in weird order Johnny's oldest, then Bobby, then Don- all older than my dad) [link]

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but mostly we stuck to the pictorial stuff

We dumpster dived at the base behind the Airmen's barracks. Plenty of free porn was to be had back there on a regular basis.

cries and cries and cries.

Well. I'm sure you'll suck less after your new haircut.

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There was one woman who always asked us to pray for soap opera characters.

Heh. Great detail.

You have never tried so hard not to laugh during church than having to pray that Vicki gets the help she needs and can, in time, learn to forgive her father who gave her life.

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Also, in the picture of my grandparents' there's a huge huckleberry thatch to the left you can't see.

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