Summer magic

School ends tomorrow for my kids, marking the beginning of summer. I love the summer. It brings to mind great times and favorite memories. Such as...

1-2-3 Jello.

Perpetually stubbed big toes (incurred from running around barefooted all summer long.)

Being kept awake by a single errant mosquito in the middle night and scratching the itchy bites it left behind the next morning, despite my mother's protests that doing so would leave scars.

Mr. Morton setting up a barber shop in his back yard. At the beginning of the summer, our next door neighbor, would set up a large bar stool in the back yard and shave the heads of his six boys. All the neighborhood kids would gather around and watch.

Eating homemade banana sherbert on the screened-in porch while watching the flickering TV in the dark.

Riding in our volkswagen convertible to the Rootbeer Stand, dressed in baby doll pajamas, at dusk.

Mr. Misty head freezes.

Fresh corn on the cob, dripping with butter. (What do you expect...I grew up in Iowa, on a college campus, set in the middle of a corn field)

Afternoons spent at the college library because it was so cool inside. We didn't have airconditioning, just big fans and big open windows that let the breezes in.

My mother covering the furniture with sheets, because she said it was cooler to sit in the upolstered furniture that way.

Riding my bike to the abbandoned Abbey Creek One-Room School house and playing in the mud and catching minnows in the creek.

My brother running around the house trying to catch a stray bat that flew into the house with his butterfly net...and actually catching it.

Playing kick-the-can and hide-n-go seek in the dark and being mortally terrified of every sound and every shadow, as I stayed crouched and hidden in the bushes.

Reading Anne of Green Gables in the dark, under a white sheet, with a miniature flashlight after "lights out".