Summers Are So Special, Don’t Waste a Single Moment

Many Court House natives will remember Cornish’s on South Main Street. It was a small soda fountain, candy store and bus station.
My mother befriended Mrs. Cornish, and she would sometimes spend Saturday nights, much to my father’s chagrin, watching television with us, in particular the Lawrence Welk Show. She always brought me a small bag of candy, so I could not share my dad’s total dislike of the gentle old soul.
One night I recall the discussion focused on summer vacation. Her words still ring in my ears, and her tone was steel-like, “It’s only 77 days,” she decreed.
To a youngster with little point of time reference, I simply could not believe that “our” summer vacation would be limited to a scant 77 days.
I remember going off to my bedroom, fetching a calendar along the way, and counting to see if she was correct.
My blood quickly turned into ice water when the realization hit me, she was right.
It was likely the first time I ever saw life through finite glasses. Up until then, days spent on Stone Harbor’s wonderful high sand dunes around 81st Street, frolicking in the surf, and wasting away the evenings on the back porch, listening to Dad’s oft-told stories or listening to that tiny transistor radio was the way summer was spent.
Such an agenda-free time is unknown today. Maybe that’s part of the reason why I never quite comprehended the need for municipally funded, organized recreational activities.
As I give Spout Offs a first read, I can’t fully understand the cries of many who wonder why recreational facilities aren’t open whenever children are out of school.
Today, every minute of every day must be filled with activity. There is no time away, no rest. Perhaps this is beneficial to some degree, since we certainly don’t want to have our children waste away, but what would be wrong with a totally “nothing” day or two or three, especially in summer?
Could it be that is why summers have “changed” so from what we remember and what we have today?
I firmly believe it’s the reason attitudes of many of our vacationers have changed, why they seem to be in the attack mode as they head toward the barrier islands and local campgrounds.
Why bother to traverse the 75 or so miles between Philadelphia and here, if there’s no real time to relax and unwind?
I believe it’s part of the “now” generation which advocates air conditioning over open screens, and structured activities for youngsters every day of the week. If it’s not from a box, it’s no good. If it’s second-hand, it ought to be thrown out and a new one bought.
Maybe it’s a corner into which we have neatly painted ourselves. We demand and decree that the next generation will be far smarter and better educated than we were.
From birth, it seems, we are chiding this younger generation to be more attuned with the world, be more competitive with the Japanese and Germans and Chinese and Indians, so that they won’t take away our national “pride” of always being the best.
We push them to attain harder goals earlier, and expect them to retain them longer than we ever did. We expect stellar results for our tax dollars, and nothing less will suffice.
Summer vacation? I dare say that it is something that one day will be as endangered as piping plovers and Eastern tiger salamanders. Put to a referendum, it may be voted into oblivion. When parents must work, summer vacation is a bother. Who will watch the kids? That’s why municipal recreation is so cherished, because it’s not fashionable to call it “baby sitting” for older children.
Summer vacation will be squeezed smaller and smaller until, like a squashed lemon; there will be nothing left inside but the seeds.
Fortunate for the children, it isn’t even mid-July. There is still time, time to waste, time to look at the clouds and imagine what they resemble. There is still time to go to Belleplain State Forest and frolic in Lake Nummy for a whole day, maybe rent a canoe and go where most people never go.
There are still golden days of summer to waste sitting on Cape May Point State Park’s sand and watching porpoises jump out of the water.
If they can still be found anywhere in wild places, waste part of a morning collecting blackberries or enjoying the smell of tomato leaves when you rub your fingers over them.
Watch the sun set from wherever you may be at that wondrous time of day, and think how lucky you were to see that awesome view that many disregard as foolish waste of time.
That’s what summer is all about. There will be time enough when days are shorter, darker and colder to concern young minds with tedious stuff. Right now, there is too much to drink in, to experience, to enjoy. To restrict children by an unforgiving regimen, even if it is done in the righteous name of “recreation,” is to steal some of life’s most precious memories at a tender age.
In summer, the best thing to do is often nothing. That’s right, just drink in what nature has arranged all around us. Night sounds, like frogs or evening sights, like fireflies, are too fleeting to expect in a month or two. There will be ample opportunity for endless appointments later in life.
For now, in July, let youngsters enjoy the simple pleasures of summer. They’re granted a finite number of them before the worries of adulthood take over. Once those concerns take root, the easy joys of summer never fully return.