How I Used to Spend My Summer Vacation
by Lee McKenzieAh, summer vacation! I still remember looking forward to the last day of school. Two months of summer vacation seemed to stretch endlessly into the future, and I couldn’t wait for it to start.
My friends and I spent long lazy days, riding our bikes across town to the swimming pool, building blanket forts on various front porches, and slurping up homemade popsicles that our moms made from Kool-Aid.
There were family camping trips and sleepovers with friends, and it felt as though summer would never end.
I haven’t sharpened the end of a stick and roasted hotdogs in years, but I still remember exactly how they taste. It’s just not possible to get the same flavor from a barbecue.
Marshmallows were the best, though, and we had a strict protocol for roasting and eating them. First the fire had to burn down till there were lots of glowing red embers. The trick was to get the outside crisp and golden, but not burned. This required concentration and slow but constant turning of the stick. If it was done just right, we could slide the crispy outer shell off the stick and eat it with our fingers. Then we would eat the sticky, gooey middle right off the stick. Yum.
By the middle of August, when the days were getting shorter and it seemed like forever since I’d been in school, it was time to shop for supplies and back-to-school clothes. By then I was looking forward to a new year, a new teacher and a new group of classmates. And then at some point during that first week of school, we’d be asked to write a story about how we spent our summer vacation. We’d come full circle. The school year loomed ahead, endlessly, but there was always next summer to look forward to.
What are your favorite childhood memories of summer vacations? I’d love to hear them!
Lee
www.leemckenzie.com
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posted by Lee McKenzie @ 12:28 PM
4 Comments:
Hello,
I have to begin with giving you my
age (71) because my summertime re-
membrances go so far back. My Dad
cut the street back in to the lot where he built our house. In the
summer time, we would go across that street, spread out a blanket under the trees and read all afternoon. We were never, ever bothered by a soul! We called it
living in the country. Imagine
how we felt when we found out that
lot was only twelve blocks from
the Houston, Texas city limits!!!
Patricia Cochran
I spent a lot of time at my grandparents', first in town, where we'd walk to the ice house every evening and get some treats that we'd eat on the screened in porch while playing cards. I'd go to the library and get books, or have library books mailed to the house! I'd read and write my stories, and we'd all relax in the heat of the day.
When my grandparents moved to the country, we'd go for walks to the creek, drive into town to the swimming pool - I can still smell it - then come home, freezing, after stopping at the grocery store (to this day, I relate Double Stuff Oreos to swimming!) We'd sleep with the windows open and listen to the tree frogs.
Thanks for the walk down memory lane!
Sitting on the front porch, looking at the stars (yes, back then you could still see them!) and heat lightning. Sweet!
You described the marshmallow roasting just the way I remember it; we did ours on the beach. I remember the story my dad told, a cautionary tale to make us be careful about what sticks we chose for the roasting: once, a family used sticks from an oleander bush to roast their marshmallows and THEY ALL DIED BECAUSE OLEANDER IS SO POISONOUS. This scared me so bad, I could never quite relax around the bbq pit.
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