In the Good Old Summertime

The picture is a reminder of the first week of May and the first-ever snow (for Arkansas) on that date. When summer sizzles like it did yesterday and probably will today, I go back and look at those snow pictures. But if looking at a picture of snow in May doesn’t cool me off, I remember being in Minnesota in July. One night my brother built a fire in the pit by the lake and we gathered our lawn chairs around it and toasted marshmallows. Guess what shivering person had to wear a long-sleeved sweatshirt? The gal from Oklahoma. In Minnesota, summertime nights are cold! Or I think back to the ice storm a few years ago when walking in my back yard was like trying to walk through a tangled horizontal forest. Parts of trees, limbs caked with ice, were all over the ground. And then one year there was the trip up a Colorado mountain in July in the back of a Jeep. The higher we drove, the more snow. It was not a warm, comfortable outing. When I was a child (yes I can remember that far back) we did not have an air conditioner. A glass of iced tea or buttermilk, sitting in front of an oscillating fan or finding a shade tree in the yard was about the best we could do. I remember phrases like, “Whew! That was a nice breeze.” or “I think it’s cooler on this side of the house” or “let’s go to the creek for a swim.”  In the generation before that, my mother’s generation, they did not have the blessing of electricity. Their fans were cardboard. And on the farm, then as now, work went on, especially in the summer. That was the time to plant, plow, weed, gather, cut hay and get ready for the coming winter. We are creatures of the seasons and perverse creatures at that. In the summer, we remember with fondness those cold days of winter. In winter, we can hardly wait for warm weather.  To a great extent, the seasons regulate our lives. And that’s good. So far, weather is one thing mankind can’t control. When I stop and think about, I’m glad that’s the way the Lord designed it.