Today is the first day of summer for 2011. The neighborhood kids are done with school and the weather has been beautiful. I was reminded of my summer routine when I was about 13 or 14 years old before I began working at Ed & Art’s Video and my days were totally free to do whatever I wanted.<\/p>\n
My mom worked at the Cozy Nook restaurant (or whatever it was called at that time) and she used to wake up really early to leave the house by 5am to open the restaurant and get things moving for the other early risers who needed their coffee and breakfast. My sister, if she had stayed at home, was also out of the house long before I woke up around 8 or 9 o’clock so the house was quiet and I pretty much had it to myself. I read whatever it was that I was reading (most likely a Stephen King novel or an Elfquest comic) for a while while laying in bed. Then I would get up and take a “shower”. I have that in quotes because our showers were taken in our bathtub that didn’t have a shower head. Instead, we connected a hose that ended in a sprinkler head to the shower faucet. In order to make this work, we would have to kneel in the tub and spray ourselves with the hose. I didn’t think it was odd at the time….<\/p>\n
After I showered, I would usually take the dog for a walk and then go back to the house and watch TV for a while. Re-runs of “Alice<\/a>“, “One Day at a Time<\/a>” and game shows were my favorites at that time. For a while, my mom ended her workday at 11am so she would often come home with breakfast for me. This is probably where my love for corn muffins came from. There was something special about one of those rectangular muffins, sliced in half and cooked on a greasy diner grill and loaded with butter. Mmmmmm. My other favorite was a “Western” sandwich with no green peppers. Both of these foods probably contributed to my unhealthy weight but they were delicious.<\/p>\n Now that breakfast was done the whole day lay before me like an open book. Most days probably consisted of hanging out with my friend Christian and\/or my cousin Scott depending on who was around. Bike riding, playing “army”, playing Dungeons & Dragons, going to the movies, swimming, hanging around with the other kids in the neighborhood…whatever kept us busy in the days before video games and cell phones ruled teens’ lives. We would often go outside at lunch time and not come back into the house until after dark. Man, those were the days!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today is the first day of summer for 2011. The neighborhood kids are done with school and the weather has been beautiful. I was reminded of my summer routine when I was about 13 or 14 years old before I … Continue reading