Oh, the Joys of the Dog Days of Summer

How I Got This Way...

HOW FAR WE’VE COME

On the evening before the auspicious day, she and her husband loaded Merv Fritz, Wes Roy, and me in their car and took us to a Dairy Queen in the city for banana splits. After the Dairy Queen, we went bowling. After bowling, we went to Dog n’ Suds for goodness sake!

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A little perspective here: This happened back in the “good old days” (sixty years ago), before fast food, in the time when families still ate together at home while sitting at a table.

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Then, after Dog n’ Suds, came the really big deal of the evening. We went roller skating! Such an event was huge! Wow!

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More Perspective: Back when Andy, Barney, and Aunt Bee were living in Mayberry, how many times did Opie get to go to Mount Pilot for his birthday? Opie and I had a lot in common. We’d never heard of soccer mom’s, play dates, or that hideous term “Stranger Danger.” We spent summer evenings on the porch, or catchin’ lightnin’ bugs, or at the free movies in the park. We hung out with friends until after dark, and something like a cell phone could only have been used by Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, or Captain video and his Video Rangers.

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In spite of all that, the three of us…Les, Merv, and me…in one evening, had been out to eat twice, had bowled for the first time in our lives, and actually hit a surface on roller skates that was something other than pockmarked and broken concrete. And, we had done it on skates that were shoes, not clamped on shoes.

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AND EVEN MORE PERSPECTIVE: Those of you who remember the metal clamp-on skates will also recall that you could turn the skate key until the leather soles of your shoes actually buckled under the pressure, and you’d still end up walking with one foot while skating with the other if you caught a curb wrong. Of course, if you were wearing your Keds, skating was totally out of the question.

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Skating at the rink was amazing! We all knew we could ice skate, but roller skating had always been a haphazard ordeal, riddled with too many variables. But, not at the rink. The wooden floor was smooth, ankles stayed straight all by themselves. What a rush! The only bad part of the evening was when the guy playing the music to skate by called out my name, announced it was my birthday, and made me skate a hot lap all by myself while a couple of hundred onlookers who could not have cared less, cared less. All in all, though, it was a wonderful evening. We got to do neat stuff…eat out…stay up late…and it wasn’t really even my birthday yet. My real birthday wasn’t until the next day.

The following morning I got up early. My grandmother was already in the kitchen getting things ready. She had promised to help me with my first venture into the world of entrepreneurship. I was going to have a lemonade stand. Lemonade card table, actually. I’d already talked it over with the guys at the gas station across the street. They agreed to let me set up by the road on the edge of their lot where the cars entered and left. In the world where traffic meant business, location was everything. From about ten a.m. until suppertime, I sold lemonade for five cents per paper cup. After I found out that mentioning it was my birthday increased my purchase ratio, my sales soared dramatically. One guy even laid an entire dollar on me and would not accept any change! By the end of the day, less the cost of three nickel cokes plucked from the ice water of the gas station’s old chest cooler, I was ahead nearly eight whole dollars! More money in just one day than my pal, Merv, made in a week on his paper route!

A few years ago, I had occasion to drive through city suburbia and encountered a lemonade stand, complete with banners and flags. I stopped. A small paper cup of the noxious brew was priced at a buck…and was served to me by a young woman who appeared to be fourteen or fifteen years old, a bit over the hill for the lemonade business. She was wearing a t-shirt, cut-off jeans, a cell phone and an eyebrow ring. She confessed to me that it was not her stand. She was filling in for her little sister while the kid was taking a break. She was twelve. Way too old for something as juvenile as peddling lemonade. At that moment, walking down the driveway from the house, came a young girl. Pre-pubescent, blond, wearing a hot pink tube top, electric blue short-shorts, high heels, dangling earrings, and more make-up than Bozo the Clown…including false eyelashes.

I talked with her for just a moment. This pint-sized replica of a cast member from “Darlene Does Detroit” confessed to me that she was celebrating her tenth birthday. Opie had just met Rebellious Miley Cyrus. Slightly frightened, I left.

Sitting at my computer and contemplating this story, I realized that in another decade or two, this very day will be one of the good old days.


And people wonder why I write Westerns.

David

Book GiveAway Information

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David performs some excerpts from his books, shares some memories of his youth, and rants a little about the writing process.

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David R Lewis

The Crockett Series

Remember: eBook #1 of the CROCKETT series, FEAR OF THE FATHER, is still free everywhere. Here's the links:

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As we mentioned last time, David has written a total of 8 Crockett books. At present, 7 are out. Number 7, Behind the Badge, was released in eBook format, January 27, 2017 on Amazon and Smashwords and has made its way to other major distributors now.

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