On the subject of Summer

Summer finally started today here in Seattle.

The sun was out. I could wear a t-shirt. Sunscreen was not an option, it was a necessity.

Summer used to start for me on Memorial Day weekend and last until Labor Day. I was very lucky as my parents bought a beach town house on the ocean in Bethany Beach, Delaware. The days usually consisted of breakfast, spend all morning on the beach and in the waves, break for lunch, go out on the beach all afternoon, come in for dinner, and walking on the boardwalk to the downtown area to have an ice cream cone, strawberry licorice (before they called them red vines) and play miniature golf for 50 cents. I'd go to bed and start the routine up al over again the next morning.

Life was pretty simple back then. The highlight of the day would be going to the Post Office to pick up the mail. You would go up to the counter and ask for your mail by your name. The address was simple. Your Name, General Delivery, Bethany Beach, Delaware. When I would get mail from the Baltimore Orioles, it was a special day. They were usually replies to fan letters, which, back then, meant an autographed picture, or a sticker of some kind.

One shelf of the built in bookcase on the stairs was my "desk" decorated with the latest pictures from the O's. Brooks Robinson, Paul Blair, Earl Weaver and Boog Powell were the stars of the show, and the stars of my desk. Bumper stickers and round stickers were stuck on the wall. It was a shrine to heroes.

On special nights, I would sleep outside on a cot on the screen porch; the moon and stars and the night time tourists my companions. It was pretty sweet.

In 1975, my parents sent me off to camp for the first time at the Citadel Summer Camp for Boys. We lived in the same barracks as the cadets. We had inspection every morning. We had to fold everything a certain way, and place items in certain drawers in a certain order. Even underwear had a precise way it was to be folded. It was hell.

Luckily, I had an outlet for my unhappiness, and out right homesickness. My parents knew the President of the University, and I would steal away to the "General's House" where his wife would fix me a diet Coke and lime and listen to me cry for hours. To try to make me feel better, she gave me a Citadel baseball cap that was a light blue, and much nicer than the uniform cap we were all forced to wear, along with uniform t-shirts and shorts. My new cool cap was out of uniform, and I got in trouble for wearing it, but it allowed me to be me, and it was a statement of sorts. 

I survived that summer, after many tears, and my parents picked me up and we went off to a resort island in South Carolina for a week. I remember two things about that island. I remember playing golf with my dad, and I remember watching Muhammad Ali for the first time on live television as he fought Ken Norton on ABC's Wide World of Sports. What I didn't know is that my parents had bought property on another island, and that was to be our new summer home. 

On Seabrook, days on the beach would be replaced by days at the pool doing 3/4 back flips. meeting girls by the jukebox and going to the dances at neighboring Kiawah Island. I won a lot of dance contests with a partner named Elizabeth Scheld. She and I won so many times, they made us the judges. We also had a collection of Kiawah t-shirts in every color from our victories as well.

And it would be on the beaches of Seabrook that I would meet my first loves... but that, my friends, is a blog for another time. My current girlfriend (a/k/a the Mrs.) wants to watch a movie, so it's time to turn off the laptop for a while.

Good night, Moon.

Yours truly,

Johnny Blogger