Summer Days
Alan Gowan
They seemed to last forever. Time
would nearly stop. The sunshine would pour down on me and the
lonesome pulsing drone of some distant unseen airplane engine
would become the solitary metronome slowly beating cadence,
the only thing marking time during those endless golden
summers of my boyhood.
I remember the fourth of July picnic
was a pretty big deal to me. Steak, watermelon, and strawberry
pie washed down with cold iced tea under that giant maple. The
week I spent every summer at Grandma and Granddad's was magic,
filled with delights so different from home. Riding in the
back of Granddad's truck. The aroma of coffee in the dewy cool
of a July morning. Fried potato cakes and Good Humors. All the
different smells. Onion sets in the shed, lumber new and old,
fertilizer, peat moss, and the lavender growing by the back
door.
But as a child the high point of my
summer really was the family vacation. Our reservations had
been made since late winter, and whereas the wait always
seemed interminable, every year the time would eventually
arrive to make our preparations. Suitcases through the scuttle
from the attic and down the ladder, to be aired out on the
brown summer lawn. Crates, jugs and the picnic basket up from
the basement. Pack some food, clothes, car and force the trunk
lid into submission and then finally ease away from the curb,
droplets of dew becoming watery lines on the car window glass,
our vacation finally tangible in that coolness of an early
summer morning.
Rt. 29 southwest across Virginia. The
trip always included a picnic lunch at a roadside table, stops
at filling stations where the restrooms stank to high heaven
and dusty fly covered hams hung in the front window, and then
finally late in the afternoon we would arrive at Fairy Stone
State Park. This was one of those log and stone masterpieces
fashioned from the land by the CCC, and the cabin we had
reserved sat in the woods right on the shore of the lake. The
plain iron bed-frames, old fashioned icebox, and the basic
wooden table and chairs set the tone for a week of simple
pleasures. Dark green wooden rowboats. We had one for the
entire week tied up to a tree just beyond our screened porch.
The lake offered the adventure of fishing from our boat in the
morning, and swimming at the sand beach in the afternoon.
Hikes on park trails revealed some of the secrets of the
forest, and the forest itself became the Wild West for our
cowboy and Indian fantasies.
Every year during the vacation, from
the park stables we would join a group of vacationers for a
guided trail ride. Since I had watched many westerns on TV, in
particular Roy Rogers, there was no doubt in my mind that I
was an expert cowboy and then naturally it just follows that
one is an expert horseman as well. Since I was convinced I
really was Roy Rogers, this was the most exciting part of the
entire vacation. I was convinced my hours watching cowboys on
TV had conveyed to me all the talent and knowledge to be the
expert horseman that I was convinced I really was. I knew my
black high top Keds looked like cowboy boots, too. We followed
the horse in front of us on the winding trail through thick
woods. The guide would pick up the pace and the horses would
run! Mostly for me, I tried to hold on and look cool as I
desperately tried to correctly time the up and down of my rear
with the up and down of the saddle. Somehow this seemed
different than what I had observed from the front of the TV.
When I became a teenager, with the
family vacation and my cowboy days behind me, I began to spend
some time each summer with family friends in central New York
State. They lived in a small town, and owned a farm three
miles away. Their boy was my age and was active showing horses
in 4H. My first summer visit found me on a farm with horses
for the first time in my life. Being the expert accomplished
vacation horseman, surely on this farm horseback riding would
come my way. First things first.
Ignorance of my ignorance had kept my
world small but comfortable; false confidence demanding no
consideration that a greater world lay waiting. A fleeting
summer afternoon in a Stuben County barn, sunlight shafting
through ancient timbers, brought awareness of larger world
possibilities. Muck out stalls, spread manure? Unaware of
these activities even existing, these tasks required skills.
Paul used the tractor to back the manure spreader into the
barn. I watched amazed as he steered right, left, right left,
cleanly centering it in the aisle. Disbelief followed, I waded
in and soon my fork was sending dank residue arcing overhead
to the waiting spreader. I being around cars and trucks all my
life but being isolated by the automakers from the nuts and
bolts that made the vehicle go, our car would just magically
carry me along, while the mechanicals silently did who knew
what, hidden beneath hood and floor. I had never experienced
basic real machinery like the tractor and spreader. Cold
steel, worn, hot oil and steel, gears and grinding chains.
Power take offs, spinning shafts and hot grease as we drove
across the big hill.
Finally with an application of
fragrant oat straw the stalls were ready. Coaxing Paul's horse
out of the pasture, leading her to the barn we began the
transformation of the horse for an upcoming show. We soon had
his horse cross tied in the center aisle and we began. This
was something different from my expectations. With a hollow
suddenness, I sensed my knowledge of horses, was as irrelevant
as my knowledge of mechanical things gained in the back seat
of the family car. On my vacation I had approached a docile,
tired horse held with a bridle outdoors in a large area. One
foot up, swing over and ready to go. That's sort of what a
horse was to me.
In the confines of the barn, the horse
seemed larger and made me nervous. Captured, tied to the
planks of the stalls, she shifted and I sensed her weight,
blood, muscle and felt her moisture. I moved cautiously, her
bulging eyes followed me. Course hair, soft nose, hard hoofs,
touch her, wash her. So much larger than me. We squeegeed the
water from her body with coat hangers. I felt her tendons,
veins, scraped fly eggs off her legs, cut burrs from mane and
tail and combed her until she shone. We cleaned her like a
baby.
The following week on a clear summer
July morning, Paul and I packed lunches, saddled horses and
into the adventure we rode. We wandered dirt lanes, crossed
creeks, wound our way through pastures, mossy cool glades and
hot stony hillsides. We explored crumbling farmsteads,
streambeds, woods and fields of grain. We laughed, wondered,
threw firecrackers into the air, got lost, talked and went
wherever the day led us. Early evening, homeward bound, we
emerged from the woods and rode into a field. Paul picked up
the pace and we were "running". The horses started to lope and
the slam bang smoothed out as if in a rocking chair. For the
first time ever, I wasn't just sitting there upon the horses
back. My legs were wrapped around another animal, the uneasy
fears of this creature were stripped away in scant seconds as
I felt her heart through my body. And then it happened. Paul
kicked his mount, I did the same, the horses exploded beneath
us, and something only imagined became a reality. On that
sunset evening, time seemed to stop as those beasts launched
us into another dimension and we flew; running flat out
through crimson air.
I will never forget that day. Nor
subsequent times on other summer days spent at the farm, or
wandering over the hills of the rural countryside. Boys being
boys on sultry summer afternoons.
Read other articles by Alan Gowan