Are any of my memories accurate? Does that matter.? The smells, sights, and feels may well be those myths that are truer than truth.

The feels:

I remember after wearing shoes during the long school terms, I, and all the neighborhood kids, went barefoot all summer. The first day, my feet felt so tender. Hot sidewalks and gravel road were a particular challenge. Minor foot injuries all summer were just what happened. By the end of summer, they were all toughened up, reluctant to get back into school shoes.

Playing with the hose on the grass to cool off. Squirting each other.

Baking in the sun. No one knew it might be bad for you. I was just sent outside in shorts and tiny homemade halters to play all day.

The sights and sounds:

Long, long says. Dark, dark nights out in the country. e lay on the grass in the back yard on a quilt looking up at so many stars . I thought I could hear them twinkling. Now, I’m pretty sure it was crickets and locusts.

The tastes:

I especially remember fresh peaches and strawberries. And home-churned ice cream. A cold soda pop.

Other places they’re called fireflies and glow worms. When I was a little girl in Oklahoma, we called them lightnin’ bugs. On hot summer nights, we liked to fight our way through the mosquitoes and june bugs that swarmed around our porch lights and stuff as many lightnin’ bugs as we could into a Coke bottle and then try to use it as a flashlight.

The Willamette Valley is not very buggy in comparison. I don’t even put the screens up on my windows. I do not miss chiggers, tarantulas, snakes, or swarms of mosquitoes. I would like to see some lightnin’bugs though.