Summertime and the living is …
It鈥檚 summer! You knew that (I hope).
Summer has always been my favorite part of the year.
Why? Because it鈥檚 not winter.
Teachers, school books, and overcoats were off the agenda in summer. They were replaced by bikes and skinned knees and overheated, dawn-to-dusk pursuits of adventure.
(Heck! As I write this, I鈥檓 getting so inspired, I鈥檓 thinking about climbing a tree.)
In my youth (sometime in the last century), I longed for the carefree (or as my parents would say 鈥渃areless鈥�) days of June, July, and August.
We thrived without computer screens or cellphones. If you wanted to talk to somebody, you had to go and knock on their door.
There was always something exhilarating about awakening on a sunny summer day and thinking you might be able to ride your bike to the end of the earth 鈥� then return before dinner.
That was the exuberance of youth only bounded by the reality of mistakenly thinking the end of the earth was just beyond South Union.
Don鈥檛 get me wrong. There were a few summer difficulties you had to learn to overcome in the 1950s, 鈥�60s, and 鈥�70s 鈥� water balloons in the hands of older kids.
I used to live in great fear of those things 鈥� because I have an older brother (Marlin) with lots of friends, who had little respect for my older brother鈥檚 little brother 鈥� me.
SPLAT!
The occasional flight to avoid water balloons didn鈥檛 dampen my love of summer.
There鈥檇 be morning, afternoon and evening shifts on East End Playground.
During the school year, my mother would have a tough time trying to wake me in the morning. On many summer days, I was up before her, heading toward my first shift on the playground. We had tetherball, knock-hockey, four-square, swings, ping-pong, dodgeball, volleyball, crafts (I made something once), jacks, movie nights, occasional dances, and something they called basketball on East End Playground.
While I was fearful of water balloons in general, on the playground they devised a fine use for water to help fight the blistering summer heat.
There were no swimming pools in the East End of Uniontown. So, the playground director, Mrs. Nancy Jenkins, and her assistant, Miss Patty Thomas, would simply get out a hose and spray all of the kids until they erupted into nonstop fits of laughter.
I don鈥檛 think I ever stopped playing something up there on the playground.
Is it me, or when you think about your adolescent years, do you ever remember being exhausted, or at a loss for something to do? I don鈥檛.
There were a few days when I didn鈥檛 go to East End Playground. That鈥檚 when my parents loaded up the car, and we visited our relatives in other towns. I was, sadly, absent from the playground on those days.
Is it 鈥淥lly, Olly, oxen free,鈥� or 鈥渁lly, ally, in free鈥�? I鈥檓 a bit perplexed because the internet won鈥檛 give me a definitive answer to that question.
Ah, the joys of playing hide-and-seek, until your parents would come searching for you because you knew you were supposed to be home by the time the streetlights came on (one of the many embarrassing details of my youth).
There鈥檇 always be an occasion when we could all fool somebody who was 鈥渋t鈥� to fall for our hide-and-seek prank.
Everybody would leave the base as if they were going to find a hiding place. Except they wouldn鈥檛 hide. They鈥檇 go home for the night, leaving the poor soul to search endlessly for people he (or she) would never find. There might be 70-year-olds still searching.
Summer.
The sounds of birds chirping, and crickets, er, cricketing 鈥� and children playing.
Those are the days of my youth I remember so well (even if I embellish them a bit).
But now, to the crux of this: When I was a child, I never heard a gunshot or knew of a child felled by it.
Where are we? How did we get here?
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight, and 50-year TV news and newspaper veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.