the friday five: summer fun

As you read this, please picture me in shorts and high black socks, standing on my front lawn and shaking my fist at the kids sitting in their houses as my mind drifts back to—

Five Things I Used to Do During My Summer Vacations

1. Stay outside – Maybe it was because we didn’t have central air or Xboxes or Nickelodeon or Disney Channel or even Commodore 64s that we were happy to spend our days out-of-doors. Usually I’d be out of the house by 9:30 a.m. and out playing around the neighborhood, come back around noon for a quick lunch, go back out until dinner around 5:30, and then go out until after dark most nights, probably around 9 or 9:30 p.m.

Yeah, that’s almost 11-12 hours outside a day—and because it was the 70s, I never wore sunblock, either! Although, having had a solar-fed precancerous growth sliced off my face, it may not have been a bad thing to have a little lotion from time to time. Ooopsie!

2. Ride my bike – From the time I moved to Connecticut at age 7 until I got my license at 18, a bike was my primary means of transportation. (I did experiment with thrashing on a skateboard a little, but it wasn’t really practical for covering long distances.) My friends and I rode our bikes everywhere—to each other’s houses, to the baseball field, to the Game Room and Milford Amusement (okay, so there were some video games, but we had to go out to play the really cool ones like Zaxxon, Tempest, Asteroids and Journey!), to the ice pavilion (a cool place to hang out in the A/C-challenged 70s, literally), to the beach and even to the legendary Wanda’s Sugar Shack. I used to treat mine like it was the Millennium Falcon—”the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy.” (Obviously, an early indicator of my love of speed!)

As you might guess, I wasn’t quite as cool as Han Solo, but it wasn’t from lack of imagination or want.

3. Play ball – Back in the day, we played some variation of baseball every day—if we didn’t trek over to the diamond next to Kennedy School in Milford for real hardball, we would play tennisball baseball (usually in the Tartaglia’s backyard until we hit one too many homeruns into the neighbor’s garden, wrecking his tomato plants and thus shutting down the stadium) or even “off-the-cellar ball,” which consisted of throwing a tennis ball at a dormer and trying to get it to fly over a clothesline for an automatic homer—I’m pretty sure this is what ruined my throwing arm and my potential million-dollar pitching career, not the fact that I was born with a rag arm. (Yeah, that’s the ticket.)

And of course, there was lots of hours dedicated to wiffle ball (the home of which is now about a mile from my house—I’m convinced the factory is manned by Oompa Loompas, but that’s a post for another day)! We used to set up a chair as a strike zone and had different automatic hits—a hit past a fielder on the ground was a single, one on the deck was a double, off the side of the house was a triple and on the roof was a homer. We played wiffle ball well into my college years, and had some marathon games.

I would say that this also ruined my arm, but I was a junkballer and never threw hard. My out pitch was a slow, sweeping curve ball that would look like it was headed for the batter’s head and then dramatically turn in and drop into the middle of the chair. Nothing more embarrassing for my friends than striking out looking at a 2 mile-per-hour pitch that they thought was going to plunk them.

Oh, and if it rained, my buddy Milo and I would play APBA Baseball, which involved cards and dice. We would play out entire seasons and keep stats. Yeah, funny how we struggled to get girls early on …

4. Swim – As I mentioned, home A/C wasn’t as prevalent as it is today, so to cool off, we’d spend hours in pools. We had a great neighborhood for this as there were at least a half dozen pools that we’d rotate through, although the best one belonged to my next-door neighbor Rick, whose parents had installed a full in-ground pool with a diving board!

I remember how we’d try and angle for it: “Wow, my parents are at work,” I’d say, “so we can’t swim at my house.” And everyone would agree. Then Milo would say, “Well, my house is too far away.” And everyone would sort of nod. Then someone would say, “Well, Nicky’s dad just put chlorine in, so we can’t go there.” And everyone would nod again. “Roger’s parents are out, so we can’t swim there, either.” And then we’d all sit there quietly for a few seconds, looking at each and looking to Rick, watching his wheels turn. Finally, he’d say, “Hey, I could ask my mom!” And of course, we’d all agree that was a great idea!!!

Rick, if you’re reading—we also liked you for other things besides your pool … you know, like your cool toys!

5. The beach – This didn’t really become popular until we were older and could get there on bikes, but definitely by high school, Milo and I were spending much of our days at Walnut Beach in Milford, along with our buddy—and Frisbee master—Bobby, and other assorted characters. Occasionally, we’d go over to Silver Sands, although there was no fancy schmancy boardwalk between the two like there is now. Back then, we had to pick our way over rocks, garbage and sewage, and past The Chicken Lady, who was this eccentric squatter who lived in a makeshift trailer on the beach after the city knocked down her beachfront home and, yes, she kept chickens as pets.

Of course we were always interested in meeting girls, which we did on occasion. One summer I thought I had a chance with the girl who ran the ice cream truck, but that …. well, melted away like a popsicle in the sun. There were other ones—maybe a post for another day.

Ultimately, we spent much of the day just hanging out and soaking up the sun. We used to laugh at a sign on the beach that proclaimed in large letters, “NO LOITERING.” As if you did anything else on a sunny beach during a carefree summer.