Summer, Sand, and Flowing Water

Summer, Sand, and Flowing Water

By John W. Vander Velden

 

On summer’s hottest day, as sweat covered I trudge under ordinary obligations, I consider the season.    Some find summer unpleasant, but like each time of year it has its moments.  For there are those days when the air feels thick the moment I step out on a morning that is more than warm and a haze hangs in the air, proof of the intense humidity.  But summer is summer should we expect less.

On those intense days I remember the summers of my youth.  And when I think of hot days of the past, my years in central Florida stand out.  Sweltering heat and humidity the watch words of that country.  Often our escape to the cool creek enough to make the time pass as we splashed in the shallow water.  We learned quickly about rattlesnakes and cotton mouths, where they could be likely found and avoided those places.  The sandy space, that, with a bit of my older brother’s engineering became our island, was the center of our games and imagination’s adventures.

Even so we had to cross a marsh to get there, and dangerous things lived in the marsh.  A few scrounged cement blocks and some long boards strategically placed along a woven wire fence formed a makeshift bridge separating us from the ooze and the slithering critters.  Eyes open, always.  Pay attention to everything around you.  We often saw the gaping snow white mouth of the moccasin but never nearby.  Strange it was not the snakes that drove us away from that small piece of paradise.  In our play, we thumped a bee tree.  And as “Poo Bear” will tell you, “you can never tell about bees”.  Whether it was anger or a desire to protect their hoard, I could not say, but they drove us out, most impolitely.

It was weeks before we gathered enough courage to venture back.  Though we discovered our folly the island had lost its appeal, and we found other places, safer places, easier to reach places, at that.  But it is that small bit of an island a sandy place that I remember best.  And when I long to escape the hottest days of summer, sometimes my heart returns there.

(369 Words)  7-27-2017

Strange What You Remember

Strange What You Remember

By John W. Vander Velden

Strange what you remember, and strange when those memories pop into your head. 

Sometimes my childhood memories are little more than a blur.  Just some disconnected moments that for one reason or another stand out among the uncountable days of my youth.  I remember when I was very young, of collecting little green apples from beneath a tree in our yard.  I would load them in my brother’s toy truck, which I may or may not have ask to use, and play on the floor of our front porch.  Why that particular moment stands out I have no idea…but it does. 

There are many such glimpses into the gray years of days long ago.  Whether my childhood was happy or sad would depend upon the mood I carry when I go back to those days.  I am certain there were times of unbelievable joy and other days as well.  I understand, now, that life is a mix of highs and lows, and childhood is a complex time.

But I write this post because there was one day that remains clear in my mind, a day that comes to me often.  I was just a couple of weeks passed my tenth birthday.  It was February 20^th 1962.  The date might stand out to you historians…more on that later.  It was early, a heavy dew covered the grass, a light mist filled the air.  We were moving…again.  Everything we had was loaded on dad’s red 49 Dodge truck, with its cattle sides raised and a platform built over the cab.  A big dark olive green patched tarp covered the whole of it.  We had stopped to say our good byes at the Coughenours, the owners of the farm, in Florida it was called a ranch, and my father’s employers, and headed out.  I remember that I was filled with a mix of excitement and regret that I would not see those dear people again.  I remember riding “shotgun” in our white 59 Chevy Biscayne two door, looking out the window that Tuesday morning, seeing what had become familiar slipping away.  I remember Duwayne, the neighbor kid wave, his hand barely moving at waist level, as if he didn’t want there to be a need…for goodbye.  And I remember the tears that came to my eye and the words my mom said.  “It’s hard saying good bye to good people.”  Yes it was.  It still is.

There is a great deal more to that memory…to that day.  That old truck, we followed, couldn’t break 40 miles per hour. It made for a long trip.  I remember a stop we made, a radio on the lunch counter, and how we leaned close for news of John Glenn as he orbited the earth. But most of all I remember a dark haired boy standing beyond a white board fence in the early morning mist, a face I have not seen since that day.

(492 Words)                            2-22-2017