Endless Summer
By Mike Haskins
I took a walk a couple of nights ago, around 8pm. The air and the light were amazing. It was that magical time when the day, though defeated, gins up its dying light to give everything a special glow. Night, anxious to spread its dark blanket, pushed in from the wings as blue slowly gave way to black.
As I walked, street lights flickered on, windows lit up one by one, and a light breeze moved along with me. A couple of kids passed me on bikes, and I was suddenly struck by the memory of the true freedom a bike once gave you.
A feeling came over me. At first I couldn’t place it. Then a few minutes later I realized what was whispering to me.
Summer.
Not the date on a calendar. Not the official first day. Real summer.
Here in Northern Colorado it was snowing two weeks ago, but summer is here nonetheless.
I spent the rest of that walk basking in the thought, remembering the possibilities summer held when I was a kid. School is out. Truly one of the greatest three-word phrases in human history.
Bedtimes relaxed. Fishing with my friends in ponds and on the river. Swimming and tubing. Baseball, basketball, tennis, golf. We lived our summers outside. No gaming consoles, and computers were still something you saw on a TV show.
There was a game my mom played with me called “In or out?” If I was rolling in around nine or nine-thirty, that was my choice. Under absolutely no circumstances did you choose “in.”
Then you get a little older and somebody’s got a car. Suddenly that bike freedom seems pretty minor.
A car means town.
I spent my formative years in the central San Joaquin Valley of California. I lived seventeen miles outside a small town, out in a map-dot kind of place. Rural. Pickup trucks everywhere. Especially in the parking lot of Hoagies Hero’s, a sandwich shop in a converted gas station where so many summer nights began.
No matter your crowd or your status, everybody loved to cruise. Windows down. Music up. And I can still hear the songs because about eighty percent of us were listening to the same radio station. Tom Petty. The Eagles. Cheap Trick. Those songs are permanently attached to warm summer nights in my memory.
You’d stop at a red light in front of Bonanza Motors and try to convince the girls in the car next to you to jump into your car. Not the driver, of course, and we’d gladly send over one or two of our guys in return.
It was seldom successful, but we remained undaunted.
A few blocks later we’d hang a left past Jim’s Auto Parts. That’s where the cowboys often gathered, lined up on tailgates under parking lot lights. We all had our own strategies for meeting girls. It was also a pretty reliable place to see a fight.
Then another left, back down Main Street, back to Hoagies, and repeat the loop all over again.
As I walked the other night, I found myself seeing those places again. But more than the places, it was the faces filling my mind’s eye. Faces that meant everything to me then. People who are now scattered across different states, different lives, different stories.
I wonder sometimes if their kids, and now maybe even their grandkids, know anything about those nights.
I feel fortunate we learned to make our way through young life without cell phones and social media. We learned how to talk face to face. We learned that the cute girl from third period English might shoot us down, and life would somehow continue.
And our parents really had no idea where we were most of the time or what we were doing.
Mostly, I’m grateful there are very few pictures. Therefore, very little proof.
Those years went fast. Next thing you know it’s college, or work, or both. Life gets more serious. The stakes get higher. Then somehow you’re married with kids of your own.
Summer changes rhythm.
It becomes another workday circled on a calendar. Summer slowly transforms into your kids’ sunburns instead of your own.
And just like when you were young, it leaves fast.
Still, while you’re inside it, summer somehow feels endless. Especially on those nights when you’re surrounded by friends, laughing hard enough to lose track of time, untouched by the routines and responsibilities that lay somewhere beyond the dark, down roads we couldn’t yet imagine.
In those moments, you’re certain the friendships will last forever. Certain life will always feel this open. Certain the night itself has been busted wide open and absolutely anything is possible.
I walked a little over two miles that evening, and I don’t think I felt my feet hit the ground once. I was completely transported by the arrival of summer.
As I turned the corner onto my block, it felt like it was finally time to come in.
And I felt grateful for the cruise, the music, and most of all the voices of my friends. The same voices that once filled yearbooks with promises we completely believed.
Stay cool.
Don’t ever change.
Have a great summer.
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