Summer's coming to an end.

I am not a fan of summer. Summer is a time of heat and humidity that is near torture for me. Don’t get me wrong if summer was like the week we were on Block Island, highs in the 70’s, relatively dry and breezy, I’d probably be a bigger fan. I am a husky gentleman of Slavic extraction and as such, heat and humidity are torturous for me.

When I was a kid, I lived for summer. We all did. Summer meant vacation. It also meant change, my school friends, also from a family whose parents had divorced would go off island to see their dad. My summer friends would rotate in. Either to spend time with divorced parents or as part of a families that summered on island.

Free from the tyranny of the classroom and the scheduled bells, I would roam on foot or by bike. I was only limited by how tired I would get. Since the age of nine or so I was a “latch key” kid. During the day when the adult(s) and my older teenage brothers were at work I was on my own. I would go to the beach every day, rain or shine.

I preferred Step Beach (despite the best efforts of my editors and the internet I can’t bring myself to call it “Steps beach”). I would stay out until dinner or sometimes later if a slice of pizza down at Steamboat Wharf or a movie at the Dreamland Theater was available. I think I was supposed to check in and let someone, adult or teenager know where I was. It was a casual arrangement at the best of times.

By today’s standards a child of 9-13 years old going to the beach and spending hours there by themself would warrant a call to DCYF or your local child protective services. What can I tell you, Nantucket Island in the 1980’s was a different time and place. Frankly parenting was different in the 1980’s. Going to the beach by myself only resulted in one injury. I was body surfing and after getting pummeled by some big waves at the appropriately named Surfside Beach I surfaced to find that I had pinched something my neck. I rode awkwardly back to our apartment in town. I think I saw an Osteopath the next day.

The internet is overrun with GIFs, MEME’s and Reels about Gen X and what makes us a badass generation. It isn’t just the fact that we straddled the technological divide between no such thing as a home computer to smartphones. It was also that parenting standards were different. I can only imagine the ribbing either of my parents would have taken had we worn bike helmets. Not to mention the fist fights we kids would have gotten into. Now I wouldn’t let my sons anywhere near a bike without a helmet. I have a healthy respect for head trauma that the parents of Gen X didn’t. It gives, “Okay Boomer”, a slightly different feel.

When I was thirteen we lived on a boat. Not a good boat, certainly not a luxurious one but one that was mostly afloat. It was the only available housing that we could afford that summer. My mother, stepfather and half-brother who was a toddler lived on a lobster boat that my stepfather had converted into a type of houseboat. My older brothers and I lived on a 1950’s vintage, thirty foot cabin cruiser with no amenities. Zero. None. Nada. Zilch. When it rained heavily which was common enough, water sluiced down the poorly sealed porthole (window to you land based types) and onto my bunk. Nothing like waking up on a sponge. It was a bit of a challenge, being moored in the harbor.

I was lucky that the Rose family basically let me stay at their house as often as I wanted. Their middle son John and I were summer friends. John’s mom Anne, was an artist from New York and was one of the first people to see any sort of talent in my writing. This was long after I needed to crash at their house in the off chance that my own abode might sink.

Summer was a glorious and chaotic time when I was a kid. I usually had some sort of part time job. The labor laws on the Nantucket of the 1980’s being loosely enforced at best. That meant that I usually had enough cash for food or a movie but not so much that I could get in trouble.

I annoy my friends now because when we go on vacation to Block Island I don’t have a ton of interest in going to the beach. It isn’t just that I spent summers on some of the most beautiful beaches in the region, though that is my official excuse. It is in part that summers when I was a kid were a constant adventure. I wonder if I am nostalgic for the time and place or just for the fact that it was one long adventure?

School will start up for the boys in a couple of weeks. They will go back to their routines and other than the free time evaporating I don’t think they will much miss summer. They are like me in that they don’t love the heat and humidity but also they have never known, the fend for yourself freedom that we had as kids.

In many ways this is good thing. After all it is not by accident that my Long Suffering Wife jokes that I was raised by wolves. Her upbringing was a bit less interesting than mine. Which is a good thing.

Check out Deported to Sweden, the Podcast where Fred ambushes me with questions and discussion topics and I try to sound wicked smaht. Deported to Sweden