Summer is at its Peak;

Not Ready For Back to School

By Tom Anselm

I just saw that there are some school districts that are going to start back this first week of August. Now that’s just not right! August used to be the time when baseball was winding down, the pools were so hot and nasty that we seldom went anymore, and boredom was beginning to set in.

August was for sitting under the sweetgum tree, trading baseball cards, sweating doing absolutely nothing, having a Kool-Aid stand, running through the sprinkler, pretending we were frogmen in the back yard pool, and reading books.

These were “The Dog Days of Summer,” from which there were little escape; unless you had the occasional family vacation, of which we had a few.

One I remember was at a lake resort with our Grandma and Grandpa on my mom’s side. It was at a place called Rockaway Beach. I was maybe pre-teen or just inside the definition. We stayed at a cabin, just up the hill from the downtown area. I think my brother Rick and I had our own room. It was really a cool place, with a pool and a short walk from the fun stuff, like shops and rides and the lake. I got this neat tee-shirt, powder blue and yellow writing “Rockaway Beach, Ozarks, Mo” across the chest.

Or maybe it was yellow with powder blue writing. Anyway, it was neat (which is a word that has been replaced by “awesome”). And we got to go downtown without adults. Which was also, well… neat.

Another time, we went to another lake resort that had this tall diving platform, we ate family style meals and one night there was a square dance. Yep. My mom thought it would be so cute for me to dance with some girl. I didn’t agree, but did anyway. I was totally a doofus, and remember thinking girls were the stupidest of all creatures. This was, I believe, prior to the teen years, when my opinion of the fairer gender changed dramatically.

Another trip was to Panama City Beach in the Summer of 1968. I remember this distinctly, since it was with all three of us Anselm boys, and I was so cool cause I could drive, and my parents even let me take the smoking hot push-button transmission Rambler station wagon into town with my younger brothers, you know, just to be cool. I think we played miniature golf or something like that.

We were the essence of cool beach kids. I also celebrated with a tee-shirt. Now this one was powder blue, I am certain. It was also neat. Are we seeing a pattern here? I also recall this trip being memorable because, when we got back to our cabin from the beach, we watched the insanity in Chicago of the rioting at the Democratic National Convention. I was just into college and wondering what all the fuss was about. I was soon to find out.

The Lovely Jill and I did a few outings with our brood. But with the sheer volume of kidness, the opportunities were limited. Once, my mom and dad sprang for a trip to DisneyWorld. Other summers, we’d spend a few days at the condo of Jill’s parents at Lake of the Ozarks. Thank God for generous parents, right? As our kiddos grew up and out, leaving us with fewer at home, we did a DisneyWorld, drove up I-55 to Chicago to see our daughter and her family, and visited the two sons in Southern California with the youngest girls, Mary Pat and the Joanster, who benefited from being at the end of the Child March. Jill and I were able to honor the memory of our parents four years ago with a family trip to the beaches of Destin, Florida. It was one for the books, all of us together, yards from the ocean.

Now these kids of ours, they have gone on to set a new standard for vacations. The oldest girls, pre-children, backpacked through Europe, MP spent a month in The Czech Republic, Joey sets off to Ireland every now and again, Tim and Allison are heading to Hawaii with their gang. But the one that takes the cake is the youngest, fondly referred to by herself as “Your favorite accident.”

She graduated from Mizzou, got a summer job at Estes Park in the Rocky Mountains, has been a teacher two years in Denver, climbs mountain, ziplines across rivers, white water rafts, and has just gotten home from a hair-raising trip to Machu Pichu in Peru. Yeah, hair-raising for me and her mom, if not her so much.

We get to revisit wonderful Destin at the end of this August with MP, her husband Josh and Sweet Baby Evelyn for a week at Josh’s parents place on the beach.

I hope to be bored in the best of ways, sitting under the umbrella, dipping into the salty sea to cool off, Jill on the balcony with her morning coffee, gazing at the ocean, and watching Little Evie rub her fat toes in the white sands. And most likely, I will get another tee-shirt.

THEN, we can start school again.

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