Summer’s Last Hurrah

As I was out walking Jessie the Dog this past Sunday evening in our neighborhood, I saw something I had not seen in many years — kids playing wiffle ball in the street.

There were four of them, and they looked as if they were in late junior high or early high school.

School was about to begin on Monday, so this was their last evening of summer vacation when they could do what they wanted.

What I wanted was to walk up to them and ask if I could have an at-bat.

I know, I know.  With the back problems I’ve had in recent months, taking a bat in hand (even a wiffle ball bat) and trying to hit a ball (even a plastic ball) probably wasn’t the best idea.

But I wanted to.

And I also wanted to know what they were thinking and feeling on this past Sunday evening.  Did any of them feel wistful that their summer break was almost over?

Did any of them have a slight dread about what Monday morning — and lots of future Monday mornings — would hold in class?

Was this Sunday night the culmination of many summer evenings over the past weeks when they had been out and about, having what would be the most carefree time of their lives?

Yes, I wanted to know all of that.

Because what I saw brought back oh-so-many memories of my wonderful summers growing up here in Fresno in the hot San Joaquin Valley of California.

Those were the days, my friend.  We thought they’d never end.

Summer break began the first weekend in June and ran all the way past Labor Day.  That gave us about 13 weeks of pure, unadulturated fun.

And since none of us kids in our neighborhood had much money, that fun consisted of daytime swimming in our little plastic pools and evening baseball games in the street.

During the days, we’d fill those cheap plastic pools with about a foot of water and sit in it.  Then we’d get under a tree with an ice-cold Coke (never, ever a Pepsi) and some potato chips — turn on our transistor radios to the rock stations KYNO or KMAK — and talk about baseball or any other sport we cared about.

We did not talk about girls — not when we were in elementary or early junior high school.  After all, there were no girls in our neighborhood to play ball with us, so what was the use of discussing them?

We’d break up around 4 or 5 o’clock and go have dinner with our parents. Dinner generally included watching either Cronkite or Huntley and Brinkley on the network news.

Afterward, around 6:45, we’d readjourn on the streets in front of our houses to play wiffle ball, softball or hardball. Any ball we happened to have was good.

There were usually six or seven of us — rarely more, and occasionally fewer.  No matter.  We’d play and play until we heard that magic sound of the ice cream truck, coming north on Arthur Avenue.

The Ice Cream Man always stopped in front of my house at the corner of Arthur and Weldon.  And almost every night for years, during those summers, we’d each pony up 5 or 10 cents to buy the best-tasting ice cream in the world.

Ours.

I always bought a “flying saucer” concoction that was on the end of a plastic spoon.  The ice cream was vanilla on the inside with a hard chocolate exterior, shaped like one of those exotic flying saucers that were beginning to inspire every kid’s dreams about space travel and the like.

Once I ate my ice cream saucer, I looked at the number that was printed on the spoon underneath it.  If a certain number was there (I can’t, at this late stage, come close to remembering what it was), I’d get a free ice cream the next night, when the Ice Cream Man came by again.

I think I got a couple of freebies over those summers.

Once it got too dark to see the ball — even when we played underneath our corner street light — we’d have to, reluctantly, call it quits.

But since it was summer, we’d get to stay up late to watch TV with our parents. That’s how I found out about “The Tonight Show” — first with Steve Allen, then with Jack Paar, and finally with Johnny Carson.

My dad loved “Tonight” — so I got to fall in love with it, as well.

But if I was too tired to stay up until 11:30 — when “Tonight” started — I’d take my trusty transistor to bed with me and listen to the Los Angeles Dodgers broadcast boom in on KFI Radio from Los Angeles.

That’s how I learned to adore the Dodgers. Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett were magnificent in describing the exploits of Koufax and Drysdale and Podres and Wills and Gilliam and Davis and Perranoski.

So I learned to live and die with the Dodgers.  That’s a habit I’ve now carried with me for the past 65 or 70 years, and I am not at all ashamed.

Those summer years here in Fresno were, indeed, grand and glorious.  No worries.  No cares.  Parents healthy.  Not much money, but enough to buy food. No thoughts about what the future may hold — except for the next day.

Yes, the kids I saw playing wiffle ball this past Sunday evening brought back all those memories.  But they also brought back something else: The feeling I had as summer was winding down back then, as it was for our neighborhood ballplayers on Sunday.

We all knew, as mid-July came and went, that we were on the “downward slide” toward school.  And we’d keep the number of weeks in our heads as August came.

Five weeks before school. Four weeks. Three. Two.

And when we got to that last week of summer break — the week before Labor Day, back then — oh, my.

It was as if the Sword of Damocles was hanging right above us. (We never would have known about that sword if not for a certain “Three Stooges” episode.  Thank you, Larry, Moe and Curly, for our early and never-to-be-forgotten introduction into Greek mythology.)

Talk about feeling wistful.  Talk about dread.  Talk about — well, school.

It wasn’t that we disliked school.  We didn’t.

It was just that we liked summer break more.  Much more.

When the great Nat King Cole immortally sang about “Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer,” it was as if he was singing directly to us kids in our Fresno High ‘hood.

“Roll out those lazy, hazy crazy days of summer. You’ll wish that summer could always be here.”

And then — on the other end of summer — when Chad and Jeremy were lamenting about how “they say that all good things must end, some day. Autumn leaves must fall” — it cut us to the core.

But never more than the lyrics that followed: “But don’t you know, that it hurts me so, to say good-bye to you.  Wish you didn’t have to go.”

They were singing about Lost Love. But we took those words to refer to our Lost Summer.

Yes, I remember those last days of summer vacation in those years.  I remember how I felt, as if those days were yesterday.

I wonder if those young fellows down the street this past Sunday evening felt any of that as they were playing wiffle ball.

And, yes, I wish I’d had the courage to go up to them and ask if I could take a swing or two with their bat.

I realize they likely would have thought this Old Geezer who was bothering them was nuts — and that their parents might have called the police if they’d found out about it.

But what the heck.  I should have done it, anyway.