Summer’s Almost Gone(rejoice)

I’m not a summer person. I enjoy moments of it; individual afternoons, or perhaps a warm Saturday afternoon walk with my wife in town talking about her job. Or grabbing tomatoes and jalapenos from the farmer’s stand for fresh salsa. Farmer’s stands, that’s one of the few reasons I enjoy summer. Nothing better that fresh produce. Or salsa. No sir.

But mostly, I’m not a summer person.

I’d like to say that as a kid I loved summer, but I don’t think that’s accurate. As a kid I’d sweat thinking too hard. The hot Midwest summer of Indiana was quite punishing. Camping in the backyard was more torture than fun. We had a tent that I attempted to sleep in one summer night. I remember specifically running an extension cord from the garage out to the tent so I could plug in our little black and white TV that sat on top of the fridge in the kitchen(this would later end up in my bedroom where I’d hook up my Nintendo to it to play Mario Bros 3 in black and white.)

My dad wasn’t too thrilled, but my mom said just let him do it. I think she knew before 10 pm I’d be back in the house anyways. It was actually closer to 9:30 pm. My dad and grandpa built me a tree house as well for summer fun. Not like some Swiss Family Robinson thing, but it was a kit that came with all the wood and shingles needed to make a triangular tree house. I did play in it a lot over many summers, and a friend and I did actually sleep in it once. By then I was an 8th grader and we were running around the neighborhood at night, not necessarily up to no good but we weren’t doing good deeds either. The tree house was a place for us to crash.

The tree house was summer fun, but I still hated the heat.

I was always more of a fall guy(insert Lee Majors joke here.) I was chomping at the bit to break out my fall jackets in September, even if it was too damn hot for one. My mom would take me school shopping and there’d always be a new fall jacket for me to wear to school. I was ready to show that thing off, even before the leaves fell. When that first crisp, fall morning hit I was at the bus stop strutting my stuff wearing that Chicago Bears jacket with my green backpack slung over my shoulder and a GI Joe lunch box in my hand. Fall was my jam. It held my fashion sense, and it just felt right and good and essential to my head and heart.

Summer had beaches and flabby bodies showing more than they should, while fall was flannel, hats, and the crunching of dying leaves under my Keds. I’ll take flannel over bare flab any day. Summer was perpetually warm, while fall is a chill in the air and adding layers to the fashion sense(“you can always put more on, but taking more off is indecent”, said a grandma somewhere.) Summer is sunscreen, sunscreen, sunscreen while fall is long sleeves, jeans, and worry-free.

I just don’t think I was every properly wired to enjoy summer. Sure, I loved the yearly summer trip to Cedar Point or King’s Island with my family on summer vacation. And those impromptu summer barbecues with my aunt, uncle, and cousins where burgers and potato salad were served in-between listening to music in the front yard on a boom box. Summer did provide nice evenings to hang out under the stars and talk about girls and music and horror movies with my best friend. Summer was also two and a half months of a video rental marathon, renting as many horror movies as we could from Video World and staying up till all hours watching them.

Those parts of summer were decent.

But nothing beat cold mornings and evenings, and fall coloring the horizon with browns, reds, and oranges beyond the plowed empty corn fields. The promise of Halloween and trick-or-treating just around the corner. Oh, and the trip to 3D or Harvey’s to find that perfect costume in a box. Or when you were older your very own over the head latex mask that you’d wear with some oversized long sleeved shirt. Your mom would say “That’s awful”, and you knew you found the perfect one.

Fall was also the beginning of my favorite holiday run. Labor Day, then Halloween, then Thanksgiving. Sure I loved Christmas but that was another season of its own. Labor Day was a nice break from school after starting just a couple weeks before. It satiated our appetites for Fun Size candies, dusk walks through shadowy neighborhoods, spooky movies, and of course the annual viewing of It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

Summer had sunburns, sweaty clothes, and lawn clippings.

If summer is your thing, more power to you. Lots of lakers around here, so swimming, boating, skiing, and floating in inner tubes are actual past times around in this neck of the woods. My exposure to lake life was going to my grandma’s on Lake Manitou and gazing at the choppy waters from inside the house. That’s where I watched cable TV and ate Nestle Crunch Bars till I felt ill(my grandpa was a Nestle salesman.) I did like sitting on the deck and imagining there was some kind of freshwater prehistoric beast that lived in the waters. My grandpa purported as much after a drunken drive home in the pontoon late one night after a few too many at the Moose Lodge. He said something rubbed up against the boat and caused it to shift violently. He may have run into a sand bar or a pier, but to his death he said it was the Lake Manitou Monster.

Sure, grandpa. Sure.

Me? I’ll keep the AC on most of the summer, mow when I have to, and take daily walks despite the heat. But when I really come alive is fall. That’s my jam, as the kids say(no they don’t.) I want to see my breath when I walk into work at 6am. I want flannel and hoodies everyday. Raking leaves and pine needles, walking through cemeteries on overcast afternoons, and having a mid-day coffee to take the bite off that chill in the air.

Summer’s almost gone. Rejoice.