I like to think about the past sometimes. Actually it could be at really weird times too. I sometimes wonder if other people are the same way, but then I think they are.
In my youth, one of my favorite things to do was spend the summer with my cousins on the farm. In the area I live, in the country you either have fine white sand, or slippery red clay. We really didn't need much of anything else, with the exception briars and kudzu. In the hottest months of the year when I was able to spend my free summers there, we were fortunate enough to also enjoy many southern delicacies; some of which included wild red plums, sweet juicy blackberries and vine fresh watermelons.
You always had to be very careful when picking this fruit, not that it was very hard to find, but because you would typically run across rattlesnakes or water moccasins most every day. The moccasins weren't so bad if you weren't too close to a pond or spring, but the rattlesnakes loved the shade of the fruit bushes, which also brought animals that they made their meals of. We typically got along pretty well with them, we learned very quickly to carry a stick and make lots of noise when picking, because for the most part snakes disliked us as much as we disliked them.
One of the more fun and devilish things we liked to do was roll watermelons down the road and watch them burst open. It's comforting to me thinking back how sweet and cool those watermelons would taste on such hot days, temperatures well over 100.
We were all fair with light brown hair at the beginning of summer and totally blonde and or skin was very dark brown at the end, with the added help of our swimming adventures. Our spot was a "concrete pond" who's water was darker than the irrigation pond that was next to it, it had once been a real swimming pool back in the 50's I had once heard, I couldn't picture it was one, but the water was cool, and the swimming was fun. I guess the biggest draw back was all the broken glass on the bottom of that pool, so you had to learn to swim very fast if you wanted to enjoy it.
I smile when I remember my summers, and I know I would freak out if my daughter was in any of the harms way that we were in back then, but I made it through in one piece, so I guess you just got to let go one day...
