Summer Is Coming... I Can Smell It!

Spring is my most favorite time of the year. It is the time God chose for new growth... Rebirth... And a newness to all things that became grey and withered with the hardness of winter. People can also be in a stage or form of winter. Winter is when seedlings lay dormant waiting to push through the frosty hard ground to be warmed by the sunshine. People who write... For instance... May have times when all kinds of thoughts mull around inside just waiting to burst through onto paper. For me... Watching the seasonal change from winter to spring... Inspires me. My creativity is at it's peak in the springtime. I have recently decorated the most beautiful cakes... And I have been able to get out some of the thoughts that have been mulling around in my mind for so long.

I love it when the weather is nice... Like during the summer. But I enjoy it's heat beside an airconditioner. I prefer a nice thunderstorm... hail... rain... grey clouds. I think had I gone down a different road in life... I may have ended up a storm chaser. Instead... I chase around the storms in my head. All of the "stormy" times of my life... swirl around until they gain enough force to burst out of the cloudy haze of my brain.

I am a thinker. I am perfectly content just sitting quietly with my own thoughts. I can travel down many paths and relive happy moments and just relax thinking. I was sitting outside this afternoon after work... And I could smell it coming..... Summer! The smell of fresh cut grass. The sound of dogs barking in the distance. Watching my own doggy's ears perk up when he hears them. The wonderful smell of someone BBQ'n somewhere! Like I said... I love spring... but summertime holds wonderful memories for me as well.

School is out! I hated school. There were parts about it I liked... Like the learning aspect of it. I did not like dealing with other stupid teenagers and all of their dramatic crisis and wanna-be grown up attitudes. I was always glad to have school out.

Summer brought my mom and my brothers and I to the Chewelah city park. This park is beautiful. It has a small refreshing creek that runs through it. Two metal bridges crossed the creek... one at the north end of the park... the other at the south end. It has tall wonderful trees that shade almost every inch of the park. We would take a picnic lunch and plan to spend all day there. We would watch my brothers play in the water... And sometimes I would join them! My mom and I would sit and talk for hours.

That park and summertime brought another seasonal favorite to town. "Chataqua"... an art fair/carnival/food festival type gathering would invade every square inch of the park... And the road beside the park... And along the roads around the park. Any inch left open between booths were swarms of people wandering through the maze of other wandering people.

I can still smell the fresh corn dogs and funnel cakes and the local firehouse bbq'd hamburgers wafting through the air. There was alot of preparations that went into this festival of fun... For the fair itself... And for my cousin and I. The week of "Chataqua" was just about the only time that my cousin was able to spend some time at our house during the summer. Sometimes I was able to go to hers... but Chataqua week was a ritual... a rite of passage... a must! We HAD to have money to spend... And lots of it! So we started at the beginning of the week scrounging around for our ever famous "YARD SALE"! We sold anything and everything... at a cut rate price! We went through my mother's garage full of boxes that had never been unpacked for years and years. We would use the excuse... "We will clean out the garage for ya!" And that... we did! I will never forget when we sold "the chair". My mom had an old...(I guess this was apparently REALLY old chair)... that was perfect!...((for a yard sale)). My mom had a heart attack just about when we told her that we got a whopping (well under $20 dollar) price for it! We thought we hit the jackpot... And my mother's eyes could have popped out of her head. See... according to her... it was not supposed to have been sold. She used some excuse like an antique or something! Geeesh! Anyways... My cousin and I would usually round up a good bit of Chataqua money before the weekend... And my mother's garage got a little cleaner every year.

We used to have all of our money planned out too. We HAD to have enough to buy a foam "lizzard on a stick"...(a painted piece of foam that was shaped to look like a lizzard... attached to a wire coat hanger type thing that looked like a leash... And they could be walked!). Quite a fascinating little toy. We also had to have enough money for a couple of rides... something to drink... a few carnival games.... And of course... COTTON CANDY! So these yard sales were a must! They were as essential as breath.

My cousin, Denise and I, we were kind of an odd pair.(still are in fact). We used to wear different colored socks... And we would trade one so each of us could have different socks on. We would then roll up our pantlegs... (this was to see if anyone noticed we had different colored socks on). This was all in preparation for the celebration we were about to partake in. Money in hand... off we went. We would walk across town to the park. The whole way we would laugh and giggle and talk... wondering if there was anything new this year at the carnival. We would make our way through the slow meandering "old people"... aka: adults... straight through to the cotton candy booth. Our eyes would sparkle and our faces would light just trying to pick out which color we wanted. We would give our money to the cute carnival guy... And giggle as we walked off tasting the first taste of sweet summer melting into liquid sugar on our tongues... periodically asking... "What color is my tongue?"

We would spend the entire day looking at the art displays... finding all of the jewelry booths... I imagine we looked at everything twice or three times... just to be there. As we walked by... we would note the prices of the various snow cone booths... because we knew we would be hot later... And we wanted the cheapest (and biggest) snow cones in the park.

One year... along one of our loops around the park... we saw a little kid that had just let go of a balloon. We decided to stand in the open fire lane of the park and see how long we could watch the balloon until it left our site in the heavens. We stood around with our heads turned upward staggering around mostly because we were getting dizzy trying to keep our eye on this tiny microscopic speck of a balloon. Our giggling and laughing was interrupted by some rude teenagers. We kept our eyes still fixed heavenward... but they came up to us and said... "What are you guys looking at?" We told them we were watching a balloon that a little kid had let go of... to see how far we could watch it until it disappeared. They wanted to know what balloon... so we pointed at the balloon while we still staggered around dizzy looking up at it. The insisted that there was no balloon... then they asked..."What are you guys on? We want some!" (meaning drugs)... that made us SO MAD! How dare they! I think at that point we stopped looking at the balloon and told them that we were "High on life and maybe they should try it!" We were so mad at them for spoiling our fun. I glared at them as we walked away with a "you are so stupid" look. They took an innocent childlike fun... And smeared it all up with the mud of the world that so many people get caught up in. We didn't let it ruin our day though. We just talked about how stupid those teenagers were... And how sad it was that they could not enjoy the balloon as we did. I think back on it now... And I still can see that balloon. I can still smell the wonderful smells of the park... And hear the carnival rides in the background.

The Chataqua festival still comes around every year. I don't go to it much anymore. Once in a while... maybe. But it is never the same. It holds the nostalgia of my youth... but it has lost it's luster to me. The memories I hold are more precious to me than anything I could ever buy there. As I drive by in my airconditioned car... I slowly and patiently wait for all of the people meandering toward the park...(since they have to park 4 or 5 blocks away). I enjoy the smells as I drive by and I always smile when I see a child in a stroller holding a balloon. Sometimes I will stop and buy a bag of cotton candy... just because.

Those wonderful summer days of Chataqua were always followed by a picnic type dinner at my house... And a little bonfire in our back yard... And of course s'mores. As the coolness of evening settled in... we would sit outside and talk about our adventures of the day... while listening to crickets and swatting misquitos. We would tell my mom of all of the wonderful things we saw... And asked her if she was going to go with us the next day. Our enticement was... "You can go and sit at the stage and listen to the music if you get too tired waiting on us". She would set us up with another s'more and we would get so sticky and black from the burnt marshmellows and the melted chocolate. We never knew it though until we went into the house to wash up before we went to bed. The whole days adventures still sparkling in our eyes... And all the sights and sounds of our fun still whirring like the ferris wheel and it's twinkly lights going around in our minds. We finally went to bed... And we would lay there and count the rest of our money and talk all night about what kind of things we might do at Chataqua the next day... until finally we both fell asleep.

Every once in a while when I drive through Chewelah... I drive by my mom's old house... And I remember all of the good times we had there.......