Summertime Memories

Chevrolet summers, Dairy Queen nights. I can’t think of a better way to describe those glorious days and nights when I was growing up in the Valley – days and nights I’d give anything to be able to re-live. My guess is that you’re like me – that we look back on those “salad days” of our youth with nostalgia and longing summed up neatly and perfectly by that phrase – Chevrolet summers, Dairy Queen nights.

Yes, I’d love to find that magical ticket to the past that could zoom me back to those days when Dinah Shore was belting out,“See the USA, in your Chevrolet” – and when a stop at a Dairy Queen was something really, really special – especially on those hot, hot summer nights in the Valley, when a delectable dish of soft-serve ice cream – or maybe a malt or a milkshake – made life seem as if everything was perfect. And made you wish that particular summer would last forever.

Chevrolet summers, Dairy Queen nights. I wish I’d thought of that phrase, but, truth to tell, it was the title of a fine book of nostalgic columns written by the Chicago Tribune’s Bob Greene. His reminiscences of growing up in small-town Ohio brought back vivid, living-color memories of the simpler times that I grew up in. Yes, those days are long-gone – never to return – but every time my memory journeys back there, it makes me feel better – because I lived through them.

Back then in Fresno, we had 12 or 13 weeks of summer vacation from school, and my neighborhood buddies and I made the most of them. During hot summer days, we’d splash around in our little plastic backyard pools – the only ones our parents could afford. We’d gobble potato chips and drink Cokes under a tree while we listened to rock and roll music on radio from KYNO or KMAK.

At night, we’d play baseball in the street with any kind of ball we could find. Those games would only be interrupted by the ice cream man, driving his freezer truck down Arthur Avenue. We’d always stop him – and buy and savor something grandly and gloriously special for a nickel or dime. Then it was back to the game until it got too dark to see the ball. Later, it was “transistor time” at our homes – when we’d listen to the Dodgers or Giants games – often in bed, before we went to sleep.

Through my admittedly rose-tinted glasses, those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer (bless, you, Nat King Cole) were times of pure joy. Sure, “things” were going on around our country and our world – but that was for “older folks” to worry about, not us. And my “older folks” did, indeed, have cause to worry. After all, my brother had gone to Vietnam – and while things were getting bad there, they weren’t nearly as horrendous as they would get in just another summer or two. As for me – 10 years younger than Ken – Vietnam wouldn’t loom for me until college – and that was years and years away. Until it wasn’t.

Chevrolet summers, Dairy Queen nights. Life was simple – and safe – in Fresno. Every Friday, I’d catch the No. 4 bus near our home and go downtown, to the Woolworth’s on Fulton Street, where I could pick up KYNO’s latest “Top 40” list and maybe buy a record or two. I started doing that when I was in junior high, when there were few worries about crime or about what could happen to a 12 or 13-year-old, alone, on a bus. Heck, I’d ride my bike all over my part of Fresno and peddle miles north, toward the San Joaquin River. No thoughts about my safety because, well, I was safe.

Fast-forward to today, when I still live close enough to Fresno to make occasional visits. And whenever I do, my buddy Al and I – we’ve known each other since junior high, and he still lives there – try to “walk the old neighborhood.” Yes, we park our cars near Hamilton Jr. High – and start hoofing it. And we keep walking – past Fresno High, heading south to downtown, then back up north, past our parked cars and all the way to Shields or Ashlan avenues.

It’s a long, long walk through some of the oldest neighborhoods in the city – our old neighborhoods in our city. We look at all the old houses and old trees and old sidewalks, and we see things we never noticed when we were young and when we lived there. And every bit of it brings back memories of people we knew who grew up there – or who grew old there – or who moved away from there. Our memories of our times in what was then our very own “Smalltown USA.”

Well, Fresno’s not small now, by any means. And I know, I know – this is silly stuff, all this thinking about the past and trying so hard to remember it. But here’s the thing: For Al and me – that time in our lives is something we want to remember. Growing up in That Town and That Valley was, for us, truly a series of Chevrolet summers and Dairy Queen nights. God, how I miss them.