Day Fifty One - Is This Summer Vacation?

I was just thinking about my friends who are teachers and that this was probably their last week with kids before summer vacation.  I guess the teachers probably have to go back and work a few more days next week.  I really don't understand how all of that works.  But then in another week or so, even the teachers will be off for a few months.  Thank goodness for the teachers.  It's a job I could never have done and I don't understand how others do it.

But the teacher thing got me to thinking about summer vacation when I was a kid.  Remember how much fun we had when we were kids and school was out?  Everyday for nearly three full months you woke up and thought, "what am I going to do today?" and the sky was the limit!  I can't tell you how many fun things I did during the summer when I was a kid.  We lived in this neighborhood with about 25 other kids our age and not too many mom's in the neighborhood worked so we all got to stay home all summer.

The summers on Nottingham Dr. consisted of things like riding horses, playing baseball in the pasture down the street, riding bikes from dawn to dusk, playing army, having pine cone fights, crawdadding in the creek, or just playing down at the creek, picking blackberries....  Eventually, the summer before the 3rd grade Mary K. Sanders moved in next door and she and I would play Barbie's at her house but until then, I always just played with the boys.  When we first moved to Nottingham Dr. I was the only girl in the neighborhood.  Later a few others girls moved in but they weren't really that much fun.  When Kara Compton moved in, she and I would play together.  But since Kara also had brothers, she was okay playing with the boys too.

There were very few trips to the pool because at the time Nacogdoches didn't have a public pool.  So you had to know somebody with a membership at the country club, or at the Holiday Inn.  Yes, that's right, at the time the Holiday Inn in Nacogdoches sold memberships to come and swim there.  We took swimming lessons at the SFA pool, but you could only swim there during your swimming lesson and then leave.  You weren't allowed to have fun.

During the first half of each summer my brothers always had baseball practice in the evenings.  So I had to go too.  That sucked.  While they were at practice, I would make up games to play by myself.  Sometimes Susan Rodrigues would be there because her brothers were on Robbie's team and we would play together. But baseball practices and games were really the only place we went during the summer on a daily basis.  I didn't mind going to the games because you could always get a snow cone.  We would spend all of our time chasing foul balls so that we could get more snow cones, because one was never enough.

My mom had three major rules during the summer:

1. Be home in time for lunch.  (Dad came home for lunch a lot of the time and when his company truck came into the driveway, we had better be right behind it so that we could walk in the house with him.)  If dad didn't come home for lunch, we ate at noon and we better be there.
2. Be home in time for dinner.  We ate every night at about 6.  I'm not sure what would have happened if we hadn't gotten home in time for dinner because we always did.  But I'm pretty sure it would have been something like, "hope you ate enough at lunch, because your next meal will be tomorrow morning".
3. Play OUTSIDE!  

Some days it would be super hot and we would come in during the heat of the day and watch cartoons.  But for the most part, we just toughed it out in the Texas summers.  It seems like now, it just gets hotter every summer.  Back then I didn't really notice it being that hot.  Maybe I was too busy having fun.

My younger brother, Ronnie, always had a BB gun and loved to hunt birds with it.  But when he was real young, probably about 6 years old, he didn't want to go out into the woods by himself to hunt, so he would get me to go with him.  I was about 7.  So, one day I decided to take a bowl and pick blackberries while he hunted.  I filled a big mixing bowl in a very short amount of time, much to Ronnie's dismay.  So, I turned around and told Ronnie I was going to head back home with the blackberries and ask mom to make us a cobbler.  This would have left Ronnie in the woods alone and he was having none of that.  So, he told me that I had to stay with him until he was finished hunting.  I said no.  He said if I didn't he was going to shoot me.  I didn't think there was anyway in the world he would really shoot me.  So, I turned around and started walking toward the house with my blackberries and he SHOT ME!!!!  He got me right in the back of the thigh!  I was wearing shorts and it hurt!  I yelled, "I'M TELLING MOMMA!!!"  He very calmly said, "you do, and I'll shoot you again."  So, I sat down against a tree and started eating unwashed blackberries.

I never said a word to mom until years later.  I think we were in college when it finally came out at dinner one night.  There were several stories like that.  It was probably best that my parents didn't know about them at the time.  But now we all sit around and laugh about them.  At the time, I am sure that he would have been punished for about half a century.

My last summer vacation was in 1979.  It was the summer between my sophomore and junior year in high school.  That summer we moved from Lumberton, Texas to Bay City, Texas.  Not the best summer of my life.  In fact it was so traumatic, that my parents didn't make me get a job that summer even though I already had a drivers license.  Bay City was my third high school in 3 years.  My freshmen year started in Nacogdoches  where I had grown up, then in February, we moved to Lumberton and I finished my freshman year and did all of my sophomore year there. That first summer in Bay City, we didn't know anybody yet.  My older brother, Robbie was at SFA already.  So Ronnie and I just kind of stuck together and went to the beach a lot.  The following summer I worked the cash register at Perry's in Bay City.  Since then I have worked every summer of my life.

So, as much as I am beginning to feel pressure to start looking for a job, I really would like to spend at least part of the summer just being a kid again.  After all, it could be another 33 summers before I get to take another one off.....  I think I'll go outside and play now.  Have a great summer!