Seasons in the Sun

What was so great about my summers as a schoolkid, apart from the complete lack of accountability to anything or anybody (praise God, I always managed to narrowly miss summer school), was the invitation to adventure and exploration. For a kid growing up in the '70s, this was the definition of FREEDOM.

Back when Pong and pinball were the only games in town, and neither could hold one's attention long enough to turn them into a mindless tub of sedentary couch lard, we got outside and gathered with our friends and secretly planned great things. If a destination could be reached by the bicycle of the smallest in our clan, we were there. We were lean, tanned and covered with bug bites and sandspurs, and the idea of being in the house in the summertime (even in Florida's 100-degree heat) was an abomination. Our parents were of like mind, as they weren't nearly as concerned with our being grabbed by some stranger as they were with us being under foot. And for all the potentially dangerous antics I was involved in, I only ever got in trouble when I was at home (like the time I took our kiddie pool, filled it with lawn furniture cushions and jumped off the roof into it like a stuntman who gets shot out of a second-story saloon window).

In the late-'70s, my folks, God bless them, broke under years of pressure and bought me a dirt bike for Christmas. [This was what they call in recovery groups a "breakthrough" step for my mother, who once made my grandfather return my Cox gas-powered model airplane to the store because she heard a story about some kid who set himself on fire. Our fun was often hampered by such stupid urban legends!] The summer that followed was the motocross version of a surfing safari.

My friend, Jimmy, had a Yamaha 125 with the infamous "power band" acceleration that was said to make your eyes bug out when you hit it. I had a Yamaha 80 Enduro, which I think was a compromise for my mother because it was neither fast nor aerodynamic, and I spent most of the time pushing it rather than vice versa. We got up around sunrise (unheard of during summer break) and headed to the gas/convenient store to fuel up. For our bikes this meant 95 cent leaded gas; for us this meant two bottles of Yoo-Hoo and as many beef jerky sticks as we could carry. Our riding spot was miles away from home in a dirt pit on the edge of a canal, and we'd be gone all day ... every day. I was 12. It was a rite of passage.

When I was 9, we lived in Port Charlotte, Florida, in a neighborhood full of other grubby, hyperactive kids. Our first project that summer was to construct an underground lair on an abandoned corner lot at the end of the street. Somehow the sight of us carrying shovels and pick-axes escaped our folks' attention, and we eagerly broke ground. Maybe, being older and wiser, they just knew how quickly we'd reach Florida's water table, and that would end that. And they were right.

Unphased, we turned our attention to the interconnecting canals that ran behind most of the houses in that area (see photo). A couple of the older kids commandeered their fathers' john boats and we set out to nearby Higgs Park (we called it "Pigs Park"), which was hedged in by a thick canopy of mangroves that suspended just above the water. It was the perfect location for our shenanigans, as we could discreetly slip our boats up under the mangroves, where they wedged in nicely between the low-lying limbs. Adding to the adventure was the fact that both sharks and gators could be found in the brackish water. When things got stale we'd go find some coconuts floating in the canals and bombard each other's ships. It was the closest one could ever come to being one of Peter Pan's "Wild Boys."




What's most amazing to me about that now isn't that I couldn't even swim yet, but that I knew every one of my friends would have given their dying breath to save me. There was an inherent presence of maturity and accountability back then (just 30 years ago), even among 9-year-olds. And as rare as it was in that day that some strange person with bad intentions would try to snatch a kid, the values of mutual responsibility and the dynamic of the community might have been the reason for the freedom our parents allowed us to explore beyond their sight. I thank God that my formative years were ordained for such a time, because, sadly, my own kids will likely have to seek their adventures in the confines of their own back yard, unless I move to New Zealand.