I love the smells of summer. Burgers and hotdogs grilling. Fresh lemonade. Newly mown grass.
Each takes me back to long ago summers when my sister, Carla, and I were growing up. There were no video games, computers, or Netflix. There were no malls or mega-stores.
We learned to entertain ourselves. One of our favorite past-times was to make our own paper dolls. We cut pictures of models from the Sears catalog to use as dolls, then set about finding clothes (from that same catalog) to fit them. Our small hands were constantly busy as we dressed our dolls with the latest fashions from Sears.
Another favorite activity when we visited our mother's people in eastern Tennessee (in the south, family is never referred to as "family" or "relatives" but as "people") was to go crawl-dad fishing in the nearby creek. Using a stick, we urged the crawl-dads into a can. Proudly we carried our catch to show to our parents and Mamaw (our grandmother). After the resulting oohs and ahhs, we took the crawl-dads back to the creek and released them. I'm certain we caught and released the same poor crawl-dads, resigned to their fate, day after day.
So, for today, I am grateful for memories of summer.
It's fun to hear about stories when you were younger.
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