Childhood Summer Vacations

During my youth, my dad usually took a one week summer vacation each year.  The first weekend we might have a picnic by the creek on his family farm.  Or maybe go to a carnival.  On Monday we'd go to a beach on the Chesapeake Bay--aunts and uncles and cousins were usually there too.  That's where my dad tried to teach me to swim (I sank instead--but I did learn to swim later).  Those first 3 days of his vacations were usually fun.

The rest of the week felt something like this:

    You load sixteen tons, what do you get

    Another day older and deeper in debt
    Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
    I owe my soul to the company store
   (because I got no allowance :)

The lyrics are from the song "16 Tons".  I'm being a little melodramatic here, but only a little.  The rest of the week was taken up by one physically demanding project or another.  There was lots of digging and sawing and hauling.  One year we dug a trench (down past the basement to install drainage tiles) all the way around our house.  Another year we built a 2-car car port.  We dug shallow drainage ditches all around the edges of the property.  Shingled the house roof.  Built a shed.  Built another shed.  Every year (usually twice a year) we did pick and shovel work to smooth out the dirt road that connected our little neighborhood to the county road....hauling gravel where it was needed. 

 

That was in addition to the regular chores.  We did chores year round, but the work really ramped up during my dad's summer vacation.  If I could go back and skip all of that, I wouldn't.  I can't say it was fun, but it was educational.  Plus, we accomplished a lot with our own hands and that's always a nice feeling.


I need to be a better dad--by working my kids much harder, so they can have that nice feeling too!  :)

 

 

Summer Memory

Hopefully we all have nice memories of past summers, happy times with family and friends.  I found myself reminiscing this morning about one of those times.

As I've mentioned, my grandmother ran a tiny grocery store in our neighborhood.  One summer we had a long power outage.  She bought dry ice in an attempt to save her frozen items.  But eventually she realized it was a lost cause.  Sounds bad, right?  And it may have been for her (I hope she had insurance).  But for the neighborhood kids it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  My grandmother was giving away ice cream!!!

We could have whatever we wanted.  The ice cream-on-a-stick selections were too far gone at that point.  So we each took a half gallon.  Chocolate chip was my favorite at the time, so I chose that.  I joined the neighborhood kids standing out in the grass, eating our huge containers of ice cream with those little wooden spoons. 

That was FUN!  And messy.  Messier than the times we ate fresh-cut watermelon outside in the yard--spitting seeds at each other.  Boys!

I hope we all have some messy fun before summer ends.  Maybe this weekend.

Have a great weekend folks!

Food poisoning!

That's what happened to me.  Or I had a bad stomach bug (there is one going around DC).  It was definitely one of those two things.  It was the worst stomach "thing" I've had since the time I got sick in NYC and ended up evading security officers. 

That's a story for another day.  Today I'm just whining about having been sick.

Whatever it was, it knocked me off my feet for 3 days and I didn't feel normal for close to 2 weeks.  On the bright side, I couldn't eat much on July 4th.  That saved me a few calories.

But I really like our traditional cookout food:  grilled hot dogs, hamburgers, boneless chicken and, this year, cedar plank salmon; potato salad; cole slaw; cucumber salad; fresh tomatoes; baked beans (with lots of bacon and a little mustard). 

And brownies and strawberry cake.

Oh well, there's always next year.

Did I miss anything while I was away?  Is your summer off to a better start than mine???