Glorious Summertime in Fresno
It’s hard to believe that summer is almost over in Fresno, but you know the end is near when you see kids returning to school. Of course, school starts earlier than it ever did when I grew up around here. Seems to me we didn’t have to go back to classes until after Labor Day, and that was glorious. .
When I was growing up in Fresno, summer meant long, hot days and warm nights filled with baseball, ice cream and transistor radios. We’d play ball almost every night after dinner, and we’d interrupt our games only when we heard music from the ice cream truck. Then we’d pony up a nickel or dime to buy some frozen delight. My favorite was the ice cream that was shaped like a flying saucer and came attached to a plastic spoon.
That spoon had a number on it, and if it was a specific number – I can’t remember what it was – you got a free ice cream. There was nothing better – ever – than ice cream on a hot summer night when I was a kid.
After our games, we’d go home and watch a little TV – in black-and-white, of course, because none of us had color televisions – and later, we’d take our transistors to bed and listen to the Giants or Dodgers as we fell asleep.
The next day, and the day after, we’d do it all over again. It was a grand way to spend a summer – and a childhood.
The great Nat King Cole sang about “those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer,” and I fell in love with that song and remember it to this day. But my favorite song about summer is called, of course, “A Summer Song,” by Chad and Jeremy. They sang about “trees swayin’ in the summer breeze, showing off their silver leaves” and that “sweet sleepy warmth of summer nights, gazing at the distant lights in the starry sky.”
Yes! I remember seeing all that, and experiencing all that, and LIVING all that, on those wonderful summer days and nights so long, long ago.
And I remember all those KYNO and KMAK disk jockeys who played not just those summer tunes but all those rock radio songs that would stay in my mind for a lifetime.
And to this day, I remember the names of the DJ’s who played those songs – Sam Schwan and Dick Carr and Les Turpin and Glenn Adams and Hal Pickens and Ed Mitchell at KYNO and Sunny Jim Price and Fred Kimmel and Dave McCormick and Frank Terry and Tom Maule and Steve Jay over on KMAK.
That was all a half-century ago – but my memories of that incredible time in Fresno are still clear in my mind. I’m glad about that – and glad I got to make those memories – right here in Fresno.