Summer invariably takes me back to my childhood. It helps that I live across the street from the house in which I grew up, and the sights, smells and sounds are the same (for the most part) as when I was a kid.
Some things have changed, like the amount of traffic on my street (truthfully, it’s like the Daytona 500 nowadays). But the essence of a Ewing summer remains the same.
My memory has erased the rainy and stormy summer days, and only sunshiny days have stayed with me. The bright blue of the sky and the occasional white cloud, the smell of the hot tar on the street, the acrid smell of the chlorine from our pool, the bang of a screen door and the special whistle we all performed to alert our friends that we were outside and ready for fun — ah, summer.
The creek was always a great place to play. We would wade through it, catching crayfish and then letting them go. I have a vague memory of a fort of some kind built in the woods near the footbridge on Broad Avenue.
We would pop the tar bubbles in the street with a stick and then write our names all over the telephone poles with our hot ‘ink.’ We would ride our bikes down Broad Avenue, let go of the handlebars as we crossed Theresa Street and fly down the road hands-free.
I don’t remember falling but we must have, because a dim memory of Mercurochrome painted across my knees and elbows has just surfaced.
We would swim in our pool, with the transistor radio perched on the kitchen windowsill playing “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” or “Born to be Wild,” or “Do You Know the Way to San Jose.” A pitcher of Kool-Aid, sweating onto the red and white checked tablecloth, and a bowl of pretzels sat on the picnic table. Cicadas serenaded us during the day and crickets and tree frogs chirped at night.
We would walk to Woolworth’s (which is now the Rite-Aid on Parkway Avenue), and buy records. Sometimes we’d walk to Carvel on Olden Avenue and get a soft ice cream cone. Some nights, my parents piled us into the station wagon and we’d go to the Ewing Drive-In on Prospect Street. We saw Disney’s “Blackbeard’s Ghost,” “The Love Bug” and “That Darn Cat!”
After dinner, we’d run outside to grab the last few hours of daylight. We’d play Kick Can Kirby or Red Light Green Light, or Red Rover. And if the Mosquito Man came along in his truck spraying his noxious white smoke, we’d run behind him, breathing in that burnt-rubber-smelling stuff! When the lightning bugs started to appear, we knew it was only a matter of time before the streetlights (the universal alarm clock) would wink on, signaling us to get home but quick!
We’d go down the shore on vacation or on day trips. Cookouts at my grandmother’s house in Hamilton, camping on the Chesapeake Bay, trips to the Land of Make Believe in Hope and once, a trip to the Poconos to stay in a cabin with my extended family.
There was a deep, fast-moving creek with a rope that we grabbed and swung across and then dropped into the ice-cold water. We had a motorboat that my dad, uncles and grandfather built, and we’d take it into the Delaware, skimming over the river and dropping the anchor near a sandy beach where we ate a picnic lunch.
At night, pleasantly tired from the day and cooled off by a bath, we’d watch “I Dream of Jeannie,” or “Bewitched,” or “Petticoat Junction.” Then bed, to wake up and do it all again.
And pretty soon, the summer smells of Coppertone, fresh- mown grass and burgers on the grill faded away to the autumn smells of new leather shoes, crisp new books, chalk dust and that great mimeographed paper smell.
To this day, the sound of a lawnmower or the cicadas, the smell of a pool, or the sight of the streetlights popping on can bring me back to the 60s summers that I was so lucky to have experienced.
Happy summer, everyone!
