My Favorite Summers
The coming of Memorial Day always excited me when I was growing up. It wasn’t because the Indy 500 auto race took place then — though that race was quite an important event, indeed.
No, Memorial Day grabbed my attention because it meant that another summer was — at long last! — just around the corner.
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“Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, those days of soda and pretzels and beer. Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer. You’ll wish that summer could always be here.” (Nat King Cole)
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By the time the great Mr. Cole sang those immortal lyrics in 1963, I was already in the midst of the best summers I would ever have as a kid, growing up in the hot San Joaquin Valley of California.
I still remember highlights from those grand and glorious Junes and Julys and Augusts from 1962 thorough 1966. Those were summer vacations from the end of my elementary school days at Fremont in Fresno — when I was 12 years old — through the end of my sophomore year at Fresno High, when I was 16.
They were summers of true fun and excitement — without any responsibility to make money or get serious about almost anything.
Those of us growing up in our neighborhood — which was smack dab between Fremont Elementary and Hamilton Junior High and Fresno High — were serious about only one thing — making sure we did not waste a single day between the end of school and its re-start after Labor Day.
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“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy” (George Gershwin)
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The biggest thing we did during those summer vacations in Fresno was play baseball. Or wiffle ball. Or softball. Or whatever ball we had on hand or could scrounge up.
We’d play every evening in the streets. We’d usually begin after dinner — after Chet and David on NBC or Walter on CBS had brought our families up to speed on whatever was going on around the nation and the world. But we rarely talked about what we’d seen on those newscasts. Instead, it was all about the latest mammoth home run Mickey Mantle had hit, or the latest great play Willie Mays had made.
Of course, we talked about the magnificent Sandy Koufax. The best pitcher, during those years, we’d ever seen — and ever would see.
And how about those Yankees?
So there we were, on those hot, steamy summer evenings — Bob and Kopi and Pete and Clancy and Robert and Larry and Albert and me — and sometimes more. We’d play ball until we heard the magical music of the ice cream truck that was heading our way up Arthur Avenue.
That truck and its driver came by Monday through Saturday, as I recall. And each of us would pony up a precious nickel to buy our favorite cold confection. Mine was a chocolate-covered (with vanilla inside) ice cream shaped like a flying saucer, on the end of a plastic spoon.
There was a number on that spoon that you’d find only after eating the ice cream. If it was the “right” number (I can’t remember what that was), we’d get a free ice cream the next time the truck rolled around.
After that ice-cream break, we’d resume our games. We’d play until it got so dark we could no longer see the ball — and sometimes, after that.
Occasionally, we’d walk to Fremont or Hamilton to play our games. That would require climbing the wire-link fences around the school playgrounds, but it was no big deal. After all, we were young and limber and — well, we were young and limber.
Some of those ball games had memorable, never-to-be forgotten moments. Like the time Larry hit a softball so far — it zoomed over the roof of my house and landed in the backyard — where Mom and Bob’s mom were holding forth.
They were startled, to say the least, when this rocket bomb landed within a few feet of their lawn chairs.
Or the time Kopi hit a softball from down the street onto the roof of Eleanor’s house. When it landed, it created a mighty sound that brought her outside to see what had caused it.
Just kids playin’.
And then there was that Sunday night when we’d climbed over the fence to play softball at Hamilton. What a night. First, one of us fouled off a ball that went over the fence and into a car driving north on Thorne. Yep. The driver had left her passenger-side window down, and our ball took one bounce on Thorne and went inside.
She stopped only because all of us started running down the field, yelling at her.
That was the game when I was playing center field. Someone hit a ball in my direction. I made a futile attempt to catch it and wound up pulling my hamstring. I fell to the grass, in pain, and the other gents had to lift me over the six-or-seven foot wire fence and drive me home (one of us had a license at that point).
After our games, we’d go home and do what every other red-blooded boy did. We’d take our transistor radios to bed with us and listen to either the Giants or Dodgers games. Most of my friends were Giants fans. Not me. I hated their “homer” announcers who always rooted for the Giants.
I became a lifelong Dodgers fan because their radio “voice” was the great Vin Scully, who had learned not to be a “rooter” from his mentor, Red Barber, when the two were announcing Brooklyn Dodgers games.
It was sometimes hard to pick up the Dodgers’ broadcasts. They were on a mighty 50,000 watt station, all right — but that station — KFI — was in Los Angeles. The signal would fade in and out in Fresno on those sultry summer nights, but no matter.
Vin was magnificent — and he would continue to be the Voice of the Dodgers for 67 years. I grew up and old listening to him, and I miss him, to this moment.
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“Like painted kites, those days and nights, they went flyin’ by” (Frank Sinatra)
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Summer afternoons in the Valley were always hot — sometimes reaching 100 degrees or more. We couldn’t play ball then — or, at least, we didn’t. And none of our families had enough money for a real swimming pool.
But some of us bought those little plastic jobbers that you could blow up and use your garden hose to fill. Maybe you could get a foot or so of water in them. And they became life-savers on those scorching afternoons.
Some of the pools came with a plastic “slide” you could put on your lawn. But if your yard didn’t have the proper slope (and ours did not) — you would slide exactly nowhere.
Of course, no summer afternoon would be complete without Coca Cola from a frosty glass bottle. (We cared nothing about Pepsi.)
And, along with those Cokes, we’d listen to KYNO or KMAK — two Fresno rock stations engaged in a gigantic ratings battle that eventually led to the formation of the legendary consulting firm led by Bill Drake and Gene Chenault. You can find their names in any history of ’60’s rock radio.
Yes, we also spent afternoons inside our homes reading such literature as the Hardy Boys and Perry Mason. I, myself, branched out by reading every James Bond spy novel written up to that point.
Occasionally, we’d save enough money to go to the movies on hot summer days. Back then, downtown Fresno had magnificent movie palaces that had been built in the 1920’s or ’30’s. I saw lots of flicks at Warner’s, Hardy’s or the Crest Theater. Uptown a bit, the Tower Theater was another fine, fine movie emporium.
And one summer, Bob and I took some old scrap lumber from his backyard and built a clubhouse, complete with an old scrap window. We’d sit inside on hot days — getting much hotter, of course — but because we’d built it to our exacting standards, we stayed inside. It was, after all, ours.
And on a few summer nights during those years, Dad would put up a tent in our backyard. The two of us would try to get to sleep inside. Sometimes, we did. I remember slathering up with some foul-smelling repellant to keep the mosquitoes at bay. And I still remember hearing the Santa Fe train chugging up the tracks about a mile away each night.
Even now, 60 years later, it all seems magical.
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“They say that all good things must end, some day. Autumn leaves must fall” (Chad and Jeremy)
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When summer break started in June, we knew we were on top of our world. School was far, far away — nothing to think about or worry about.
When the Fourth of July rolled around, we were still in great spirits — a world of our own. After all, we had nearly all of July and August left.
But near the end of August, we knew. Knew that classes were about to start again and ruin our perfect summer vacations.
It wasn’t that we hated school (though I must say, Fresno High was not my favorite time of life. Hamilton had been much better, and Fresno State University would be a joy).
It was just that school meant — responsibility. Getting up early. Going to classes. Homework. You know what I mean. You remember.
And when Labor Day came — oh, my. Gloom City for us neighborhood kids. Of course, the days already had gotten much shorter, so we had less time to play ball in the evenings. And soon — usually the week after Labor Day, as I remember — we’d be back to our school regimen.
There were no regrets, of course, about what we’d done during those summers. We’d had the time of our lives. We did not know — could not know — that soon — and for much of the rest of our lives (until retirement) — summers would be times of work, just like the rest of the year.
That, of course, is just part of life.
But those summers in the ’60’s, in the hot Valley town of Fresno — brother, they were oh-so-cool — the very best of times.
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“Those were the days, my friend. We thought they’d never end. We’d sing and dance forever and a day” (Mary Hopkin)