ODES TO SUMMER

Prologue
“The loveliest season is Spring; Autumn’s the most delightful; but the best of my myriad memories belong to Summer.”

Someone, anyone, answer me this… why does winter long linger but summer given short shrift?

I’ll not account the number of my years as meaningful. My time is measured by the memories of summers that made singular contributions to this life’s happiness. Herewith a few contributions:

And The Livin’ Is Easy
Ditched classes for day at the beach. Sand was warm, water too cold. On a blanket, sipped a tall screwdriver out of a thermos through a bendy straw, my head propped up on Carol’s thigh as she read to me from Harold Robbins’ novel, ‘The Adventurers’.

Twilight And Rhapsody In The Park
At the band shell, at evening’s gloaming, sitting on the ground, enjoying the salute to Gershwin with a friend, a music major. Two young ladies within eye catching distance are making a picnic on a gray-pink check blanket with a large brown basket on it – the fancy kind… with hinged flaps. After some happy banter fused with beaming grins, mingled with giggles, they wave us over. Shared wine in Dixie cups, with cheese, fruits, nuts and conversation, a-la-carte. A moveable feast it was, and memorably thrice scented… the grass, wine, and the girls. All in all, an indelible evening… especially as I’d never been ‘pick up’ material.

Alpha Female or… My debut As… The Other Man
Parish carnival on a sultry summer evening. She was slender but with clear evidence of ‘female’, and hints of a feline locomotion that would soon be untethered. She was one of the “it’’ girls in school, a year ahead of me with a boyfriend a year ahead of her. She was also as friendly as she was female. The constituent parts that fashioned her character would not have permitted her nose up in the air. There’d been a squabble between the two. I was closest for her to make a public scene with, with a point attached. Took me by the hand and, off we went, three, maybe four, rides on the Ferris wheel with a conversation that hadn’t a hint of her but was all about me. If she hadn’t grown all the way up to one sensational woman I’d be mightily disappointed.

Saturday Night Joyride In A Stolen Two Tone Chevy
There’s no-one on earth as arrogantly, extravagantly, stupid as a teenage male… NO-One… and three fourteen year olds together are dolts exponentially thick.
Nothing to do on Saturday evening so, which one of the three friends would have thought stealing the old man’s car a nifty idea? Why… all three of course. Stopped off for sodas and cigarettes, and off we went – juvie badasses. Took the expressway to the airport, to scope the broads.
It’s past time to get going back… discover the tank’s near empty and the bank nearly so. Pool our money – 95 cents! As luck would have it, gas was a quarter and three cents a gallon. Got the tub back home safe with no-one the wiser. Loved it when that happened.

L’estate più dolce
The day was the best summer had made to date. At the entrance to the Mediterranean, Atlantic winds softened to zephyrs leaving dark aquamarine wavelets behind, entrancing anything with feelings with sensations. On the side of one of the white cliffs, a savoy azure villa with rust red/brown clay tiled roof, rested elegantly. The cliffs had been joined together by God Himself – a marriage of sturdy to beauty. The villa itself was made secure and habitable by gifted artisans, and cliff and villa were, together… paradise found. The ‘sei e un quarto’ morning air was fresh, zesty, floral… each a fragrant votive incense celebrating life. Endless green and yellowing fronds along the edges of the balconies swayed in rhythm to the beat of the breezes. The smaller balcony overlooked the larger, and there, on the more intimate, breakfast was served to Lucia and me. As with young women, more again young Italian women, Lucia was animated with life’s passions from the moment her eyes tired of sleep. She spoke quickly of her day’s plans, intending, it seemed, to get more said and done than had ever been said and done in a day. So lovely a gilded voice would not have made a more joyful sound anywhere else on earth than there… and then… and…

Okay… last one’s a fancy. Hadn’t happened… yet.