Sitting here thinking about Summer.  I don’t know who thought of the four seasons.  Summer is the one that seems to get the most credit for enjoyment.  You hear folks talk about how they can’t wait until Summer gets here.  When it is ending you hear folks talking about holding on to a few more days of Summer.  At the least, trying to hold on to a few more days in the Sun.

When I was a kid Summer meant riding my bike, going to the pool, playing baseball from morning til night on some days, watching the MLB Game of the Week on NBC listening to Joe Garagiola and Tony Kubek call the game on Saturday afternoons.  With the exception of Keith Jackson and Frank Broyles, this may have been the best broadcasting team ever to slap on headphones and speak up about a game they played and enjoyed for the game’s sake and sake of the listener at home.  Not outlandish, no superfluous, not anything but the way it was.  I miss that.

At the town pool where I grew up we had a 3 foot, a 4 foot, and a 5 foot.  Near the 5 foot end of the rectangular pool was a rope that separated an exclusive section that was more of  a squatty square compared to the rest of the white painted cement pond. Beyond the rope was an incline.  The dreaded 11 foot.  Above the 11 foot was a high dive and a short dive.  Diving boards.  I climbed the high dive on many occasion and did a can opener or a lazy birdy, or a straight down, or if I was really bold and the girls were watching, I would attempt a dive.  This diving attempt usually turned into the “back-breaker”…so painful on occasion that I thought about just staying down there…but with a nod to Pat Conroy, my lungs would betray me.  I had to come up for air.

Hey at least I was cool enough/or not cool enough that the town bully never took my bike and swam it to the island of the town pond that sat next to the town pool.  While The Captain and Tennille were blaring “Shop Around” out of the pool’s mono speaker, many a bike was snatched from its kickstand and rolled to the edge of the town pond and there the town bully would swim the bike about twenty yards or so to the island near the center of the pond.  He would then prop the bike back up on its kickstand for everyone  driving up and down Bridge Street to look upon, laugh at, and know that the natural order of things was still in place.

We played baseball.  Me and Johnny Johnson, no relation, though we might as well be played together often.  And there were many others.  John and I are still in contact 40 years since we played together on the Yankees.  Of course he was on the ’79 Royals team when we won every game…and got the trophy to prove it.  That was when the winner got the trophy and the rest wished they had.  I was on the side of wished they had every other year I played baseball, which was many, and I have never once had to go to therapy to get over it.

Summer.  Watermelon, The Jackson County Fair…please get there if you can it will make you a better person, and The Brownstown Speedway.  I have made mention of it before.  We lived in Brownstown when I was kid.  We lived on Jackson Street.  The last proper street in town to the East.  Beyond a large cornfield and grass parking lot to the East was the speedway.  We did not have air-conditioning when I was a kid.  Cars going around a dirt track quarter mile was my lullaby on Summer nights.  I hope my memory stays strong.

LAST SIGHTS OF THE BERKSHIRES….

My dear wife, Carrie, and I got home on Tuesday last.  Our New England repose was complete.  I will leave you with a picture or more and a few words about them.

One thing I love about The Berkshires (we were five miles from New York (state) and twenty-seven miles from Vermont if you want some reference)  is the selection of newspapers.  Newspapers are a passion of mine.  You can’t do this anywhere else I know of.  The Northeast loves their print.

Across the way from where we stay is Jiminy Peak one the largest ski slopes in Mass.

Though I won’t show you the whole trip up and down from our place to the main road at the bottom of the hill, I will tell you that these photos don’t do them justice.  My calf muscles wince just looking at these pictures.  Look, I walked 6 miles on some fairly even ground on the campus of The University of Ramsey yesterday.  A mile up and down this is much tougher.  There was a reason I walked up and down this hill like I did:

I thought of Bart Bigham.  Bart, you would be proud of your ice cream.

We stopped in Saratoga Springs, NY on the way home.  It is actually a little North of where we stayed.  We were there for good reason.  This is the Visitors Center.

Springs are about town and you are encouraged to drink your fill.

These things are pretty cool…literally!

Then it was concert time.

Natasha Bedingfield and OAR opened for Train.

Carrie and I were sitting in our seats before OAR started to play. I had not heard them before. I told Carrie I didn’t even know what an OAR looked like?  They were easy to listen to.  They sounded very good.

Train…always sounds good.

Their stage looked like a big jukebox.  The Saratoga Performing Arts Center, or SPAC to those up there, is a great outdoor venue nestled in woods like nothing I have ever seen before.  I never tire of listening to live music.

As I type these words on the back porch in Southern Indiana, the blue sky and the clear air and the unusually cool temps remind me of …if only I had some more papers to read.  Yes, I am greedy.  So instead of reading, I write in an effort to…speak the rights.

Danny Johnson