Summer -- The Lost World
by Hal Jacobs
Looking for the "Lost World"? You don't need to revisit the Jurassic Age. Try going back 20 or 30 years when the lost world was summer vacation. Take a step back into time...
When an eternity lay between the last day of school and it's distant cousin, the first day of school. So many days it would be pointless to count them. A few events sprinkled in there. A family trip. A visiting relative. Nothing too painful.
Summer was our raft trip down the Mississippi with Huck and Jim. Hot, lazy days interlaced with adventure. While crossing the hot pavement with bare feet, we suddenly became prisoners forced to walk over hot coals by politically incorrect Apaches. Rather than give them the satisfaction of screaming like our little brother or sister, we bear the pain, tightlipped, then collapse in the cool green grass, knowing we've earned the respect of the Indian war chief.
Summer was about bonding with dogs outside the house. Your dog, with its tongue trolling out of his head and gnats hanging around its drooling spigot of a mouth, knew how to cope with a long summer day. Following your dog's gracious example, you too could relax in the cool dirt under the house. And when your mother began calling you, entreating you to come inside and cool off, you could watch her dissolve into tears as she realized you weren't coming... That you were, in fact, lost forever because you were now in another dimension invisible to human eyes. Only dogs could see you now.
Summer was about going door to door to see if your friends were doing anything more interesting than you. Usually they weren't, and you felt relieved. Sometimes they joined you, sometimes they looked at you like, "Go on without me. I'll be all right. Really..." and you knew deep in your heart you might never see them again.
Summer was about hanging out with the old folks who lived a few doors down from you. They would always stop what they were doing a moment to smile at you. They'd ask if you were enjoying your summer, then they'd talk about how hard they worked when they were your age. Then they'd go back to hoeing or weeding, and you'd feel sorry for them, seeing how they must've looked 60 years ago, while they were hoeing or weeding.
Summer was about trips to really exotic places. The beach. Where waves pounded you harder than the big kids who lived a few blocks away. Where your skin became as brown and crusty as a potato chip. The mountains. Where you met kids who had never seen the beach.
Best of all, the motel room. No matter how hot it was outside, the motel room was the coldest place on earth. At night you were like Dr. Zhivago sleeping under heavy blankets. The other truly amazing thing about the motel room was the motel TV, with different channel numbers and shows than your TV at home. Where, to your amazement, the real Superman Show was on at 4:30 p.m.
Also, there was the motel restaurant. Where you always ordered pigs in a blanket, pancake-wrapped link sausage, because you enjoyed saying "pigs in a blanket, please" to the waitress.
Oh yeah... And summer was about long brooding over nothing. About the reversals of fortune, the treachery of friends, the unexpected kindness of strangers, about wondering if school and cool nights were ever going to arrive again.
Summer was the Lost World that buffered us against growing up too fast.
Written on the day before the first day of summer vacation for Daniel (age 10) and Henry (age 5).
The Atlanta Constitution, Monday, June 16, 1997
