Summertime Memories

Another blogger I like has written today about her childhood summer memories and being in the garden with her grandmothers.  Mine is a bit different as I was a city/suburb kid.  However my grandparents lived sort of in the country until I was about 9.   It was a new house on a large lot surrounded by farmland, only about 4 houses within sight.  Nana & Papa had a small garden out back but I don't remember much about it except Nana had pansies at one end one year and I seem to remember canna lillies.  

The farms around them grew corn mostly.  I remember several times when I stayed with them that Papa and I would go for a drive on narrow dirt roads.

Each side of the road looked like this with corn stalks as tall as Papa, and he was tall.  We seemed to be flying down the dirt road with no other cars, windows open because no one had air conditioning in Michigan, and you could not see over the corn, it was like a corn fence for miles and miles.

I don't recall that we ever went anyplace particular, just ended up back at home.

I used to amuse myself playing 78 records on an old record player, I loved the Doris Day one from Calamity Jane.  Whip Crack Away and Secret Love were my favorites.

Before Nana went to work for the evening (she worked 2nd shift at GM) I liked watching her wash clothes in the wringer washing machine. 

I remember it looked something like this one.

I'm not much on sports but Papa was an avid baseball fan and would listen to one game on the radio while watching a different game on the TV.  Multi-tasking before the word was coined!

Summers at home were long lazy days spent reading or sewing or watching TV in the cool basement.  Evenings were mostly spent on the covered back patio lounging in the swing, again reading mostly and listening to the glass windchimes.  Mom always seemed to have boxes of petunias on the patio, loved their bright colors but not so much the stickiness of them when pinching off the spent blooms.

 I remember the drone of the fan in the hallway as it moved the air to both mine and my parents' bedrooms.  

Ours was similar to this and was green.

I loved laying in bed and looking out the window at the moon through the trees and it didn't matter if it was summer or winter for that.  Though the breeze through the window in summer was much appreciated. 

We ate lots of watermelon, went strawberry picking, canned peaches and cherries and green beans and ate lots of dinners at the picnic table on the patio.

What are your favorite summer memories?