Every summer of my childhood, I would travel to my Grandma Patty’s house in Kirkwood, Missouri to visit for a few weeks. She had a beautiful, in ground pool in her back yard and plenty of space for all the grand kids to hang out and have fun. She would love to have us every year, especially after my grandfather died suddenly of a heart attack. She needed the company.
Missouri in the summer is a tad on the warm side so she wouldn’t let us play outside in the pool all day long, especially on the hot days. She also didn’t want us getting all pruny! On many of those hot days, she would yell at us to come and in read a book in the air conditioning. I loved to read, especially in the summer, so it was really not a big deal.
Most of the books I read as a kid and early adolescent were science fiction books. I read a lot of Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke in those summers. Thinking about those stories always brings me back to those hot Kirkwood days when we’d have to sit inside and wait until Patty said it was OK to go back out in the pool. As I got older, I lingered longer and longer with whatever book I had chosen to read. Many times I would bring the book outside with me and read under the umbrella in the patio furniture that was just off to the side of the pool.
She sold her house after my senior year in high school but every summer since that time, I have always had the profound urge to read science fiction books in the summer. This summer, I’m reading all the Larry Niven Known Universe books in future history chronological order. Right now, I’m on Protector, a story that spans two hundred years and deals with alien involvement in the evolution of humanity on Earth. The image to the left is exactly what my copy looks like. It’s an older edition that is from the 1980′s which would be right around the time I would have been at Patty’s house.
It’s been pretty hot up here in the North Woods this week as summer is off to a roaring start. As I sit in my extremely comfortable chair in my front room leafing through the pages, I’ll stop and close my eyes when my air conditioning kicks on. The feel of the cool breeze coming out of the vent and the smell of the old book pages brings me right back to those Kirkwood summers. I’m 12 years old again and sitting in my grandmother’s house, reading and waiting to go back outside to the pool.
If I had the smell of chlorine, I’d probably travel back in time!
