800 miles is a long ways to go just to help us get our stuff here but our dear friends, the Morris Family, did just that. We are beholden to them all.
The month of July officially shows up on the calendar tomorrow and for goodness sake it just seems like yesterday when I realized that it was nearly June. Summertime waits for no one, never slowing down. Not one little bit. I hope that "the 20" are enjoying the good times that await them back in the mountains. Soon enough their vacation days will be gone and the business of being second graders will be at hand. For the days that lie ahead though, I hope they can do one thing.
I hope that they can just be children.
My memories of being a kid in the summer are many and it seems strange in its own way how the brain is able to store up so much data about years long passed. Of course I can't remember it all but I can remember much of it. I guess those would be called the "good parts".
As a little kid and the 6th child out of 7, I recall many hot summer days playing outside with my sister as we had fun doing things without the modern technology of today. We made mud pies and set them to bake on an old board in the afternoon sun only to throw them against the tree when they were finished. Then we started all over again. Our imaginations went wild as we made do with things that were ordinary in their nature. Yet in the hands of 6 and 8-year olds they became things that they were really not. The one and only tiny black and white TV that we had was never turned on much. Our folks expected us to be outside and enjoying the day and we did just that. I like that about my childhood and I'm grateful that's how it went for me.
As I grew into my teenage years, my imagination was still put into play. At night as I lay in bed I would listen to the radio on my bedside table. It was back in the early days of FM stations but there were AM stations aplenty. My favorites were WLS out of Chicago and KOMA out of Oklahoma City. I was just a farm kid, a young girl from the prairies of Kansas. At that time, the only other state that I had ever been to was Oklahoma for crying out loud! Yet listening to the music on the radio would take me to other places. Some day I imagined that my world would become bigger but until then I lived vicariously on those long summer nights in that larger realm through the sounds that emitted from that little blue transistor radio.
By the time we were older and had moved to Haven, our summer days and every other day of the year for that matter, were spent working in our family restaurant. I would have to admit that my imagination probably took a different form in those days. From the time I was 11 until the day I turned 21, I was involved and doing my part in keeping the family business going. Although it seems as though we sure did a whole lot more working than most of the other kids around had to do, my days there at Scott's Cafe taught me a whole lot about life and myself. It was there that I learned my work ethic, one that was pretty much summed up in my mother's famous words.
"Hard work is not going to kill you."
And she was right.
I am still alive and well.
My imagination is still intact.
The little girl that I used to be imagined that she was a world famous baker whose mud creations were pastries fit for a king or queen.
The teenage girl that she grew up to be imagined a world that one could travel to all by turning a simple dial on a radio.
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