I can clearly recall the summers of my teens. I usually had a job, but there was always plenty of down time. It was a time to creatively get into things, most of them physical. For instance, my generation in California invented the skateboard.
This was ages before you had to take out a loan to buy one at the Skateboard store. We just got some scrap two by fours and stole some wheels off our sister's roller skates when they weren't looking.
We all have scars to prove it. We had no knee pads or helmets. And the early skate boards had no turning mechanism. One of the more effective ways to stop in those early days was to just dive on the grass next to you when you came to a curb. If a car mangled your skateboard? You just started looking for your sister's other skate.
We used to race in our bare feet around the Pine Street city block we lived on. We deliberately added an alley link so we could build up callouses. We had chalk marks for all sorts of distances that nobody races anymore. We set out the different distances so each of use could win at one length or another.
Once, we got on a unicycle kick. Since I owned the unicyle I was really the only one to master it. It took me about a month to get the balance down, and then I was "hell" on wheels.
Not everything we did was physical. Art Eshelby had an actual LP record player. And on the shelf was an album by the Mills Brothers. We sat around that record player for days memorizing all their music in a sing along. We may very well have been inventing karaoke. "Up the lazy river, by the old mill run, the lazy, lazy river in the mid-day sun...."
I guess the really nice thing about those summers was the pressure was off. We only had to BE. No one was messing with our spirits. No one was telling us which way to go. And we just jumped in and let things happen.
I bring this up because life has come full circle. I'm off this summer. Peggy and I are following our whims. For instance?
Wimbledon comes along. We watch one match and then go out and play tennis every day of its run. I even got some of my strokes back. Peggy plays regularly year round, but putting up with me figuring it out again? That's been a challenge.
We're watching the Tour du France the other day? And so I go to the garage and pull down my bike? It had been up there for ten years while I waited for the discs inmy neck to fuse.
Well I had to go spend 20 bucks on a pump? But I'm back in business. I went on a ten mile ride...and I know that's nothing these days. But it's something if you haven't done it for a decade. And that would be a decade where you'd added 40 pounds to your frame.
A couple of weeks ago we're cruising through a Border's Book Store and I see a title on Meditation. It's something I had sort of gotten into in my mid-20's when I was trying to quit smoking. It didn't really work for the smoking, but I got rid of whole bunch of other bad habits.
Anyway, I say to myself, "I got time. Why not?"
I won't try to sell anybody else on it, but man has it been fun. I can actually sort of get into that lotus position? And it took a while? But yeah, I can see my breath now.
But what's really cool? I'm out on this three mile hike that twists and turns on a constant grade. So to amuse myself today? I pick out a Black Eyed Susan on a tall stalk, about 100 yards ahead of me. It is slightly around a curve on a five percent grade? I close my eyes and visualize it? And I keep my eyes closed? I stay focused? I walk right to it. Wow!
I've always been amazed at all the things Jefferson and Franklin crammed into their lives? They must have had some great summers.
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