Memories of Summer Days

Its not so important when you are younger. The world is filled with action, there are challenges to be met, worlds to conquer and lives to grow into. The tension of waiting to be picked by the older guys for a sand lot baseball game. Making the varsity football team and suiting up for your first away game. That first cruise with a new driver's license. A good night kiss from a girl you are desperately smitten with, on your first date. So many things to distract you from yesterday.

But at some point, in quiet reflection, you do the math. More years behind you than you can hope to have ahead of you. Creaky joints that scream for two cups of strong coffee and a steaming shower in the mornings to put at least a little spring in your step. Time is running out. Not gone but going and it seems faster every year. And you start to scan through your memories looking for something, unclear at first, but then with work, coming more sharply into focus each time you visit. The early things, the things that were fine and good when your world was new and mystery lay just beyond the edge of the grass in your parents' front yard.

I remember early summer mornings. Braving the front door under a mother's watchful eye, to sit in my four year old glory, on the front step and let the sun shine warm on my face. Watching and waving as the old man headed off for work at the barber shop in his brown hen's egg colored Plymouth coupe. Closing my eyes and hearing the sounds of early morning. The neighbor's barking dog in the back yard down the street. Birds chirping in the trees. And, from down the street, the rhythmic sound of the engine of a milk truck from the local dairy, moving and pausing as the deliveries were made. The slam of the cooler door and the melodic clinking of the quart sized glass bottles as the delivery man carried products from the truck to each door. Listening to the sound of milk box lids thumping shut and waiting to hear the musical evidence of empty bottles being returned to the truck. With a little practice you could tell a rack of full bottles from a rack of empties. Its a sound you never hear anymore. We live in a plastic and cardboard world today it seems.

The sounds getting closer as he moved through the neighborhood closer and closer to our curb. Then suddenly the Meadow Gold truck was there, its brakes screeching just a bit as it stopped. At first nothing to see, but then, around the street side of the truck came the deliveryman in his white dairy uniform and cap, opening the rear doors, checking his list and moving toward the house. Two quarts for the Flemings, tinkling in that metal rack, and some cottage cheese and maybe, just maybe, a carton of ice cream. The old man loved vanilla with Hershey's chocolate sauce and peanuts. He would sit and stir a bowl of that treat until it became a brown soppy mess ready to be scooped up and savored like soup. The sugar sweet ice cream. The rougher, slightly bitter bite of chocolate and all those crunchy peanuts.

And so here he came, the delivery man, and as he passed he would stop and bend down to ruffle my hair, thick and wild and wavy and bright red. "Here kid, you wanna treat?", he would ask and produce a big chunk of ice. Milky white, cold as the North Pole, so that it burned your hands while you held it. I would run inside and get a napkin to hold it in, returning as he drove away to sit on the step in the warm sunlight and lick that ice with a tongue so cold it was numb in my mouth. The neighbor girl would come to the step. "Watcha got?" "Ice" "Is it good, what's it taste like?" "I dunno, milk I guess." "Can I have a lick?" "Yeah, come on up here." So we would sit side by side on the step in the morning sunlight, with the birds chirping and the neighbor's dog barking and the milk truck slowly making its musical way down the street, sharing licks of milky ice while the napkins got soppy and our hands became numb. And in the house, I could hear my mother humming to the radio while some guys called the Four Lads sang some goofy song about standing on the corner watching all the girls go by. I heard it so many times that I can still remember all the words to that silly song. So, although I didn't know it, my first steady girl sat with me every summer day in the early morning sunlight sharing licks on a piece of ice, a gift from the milk man. Was it me she liked, or just my milky ice chunk? I never asked and she never said and then she moved away and I never knew.

But the sun sure did feel good on those mild early summer mornings. And the world was good and all I knew was peace and contentment, love and affection. And when you are younger, you don't think so much about the past. But when you are older, and you've lived more years than you're gonna, you start thinking back over time to days like that. And you wonder, what would I trade to go out and sit on that step again and see my Dad smile and wave and hop in his Plymouth to drive off to work, and have that sun shine in my face so warm and gentle and have that neighbor girl there to share licks on that stupid chunk of ice again. And to hear my Mom singing in the kitchen, and pretty soon, that stupid song starts playing over and over again in your head. And your throat gets kinda tight and a tear runs down your cheek. And if you are very very lucky, your wife comes up and wipes that tear away and says, "Whatcha thinkin' about?" And you try to clear your throat in a manly sort of way and say, "Oh just a bunch of stupid stuff." And she gives you a hug and leaves you alone. And every once in a while, off in the distance, you think you hear those milk bottles clinking together and you close your eyes and just for a second, the sun turns gentle on your face, and you don't have to trade anything for it. And that's pretty damned nice, no matter how you slice it.