Our summers growing up were glorious. Dad was a teacher, so had most of the summer off. In the mid-1960's, he found some old stocks from a former job that he had forgotten all about. When he cashed them in, he had enough to buy some land and build a cottage. Oh those were the days, indeed. My two younger brothers and I would spend HOURS playing in the sandpit beside the beach. We would spend all morning building huge cities, then wash them away with buckets of lake water so that we could start all over again the next day.

We spent the afternoons hiking and exploring the many acres of woods and waterfalls. We built a fort (Chipmunk's Playhouse) which we enjoyed for many, many years. On rainy days we played board games.

Dad's BBQ hamburgers, fresh corn and asparagus from Dad's garden, strawberries from the farm down the road, watching the racoons roll around on the front veranda in the evenings, building bonfires on the beach and roasting marshmallows (with graham crackers and chocolate chips - called S'Mores) late at night with the other cottagers.

Glorious, glorious, glorious days. We really did believe that they would never end.

Dad would bring home a blow up pool every year. When we got older, my sis and I would lay out working on our tan. She just reminded me we'd use cocoa butter.

I distinctly remember the smell of lilacs and the salt air. Summer spent on the beach and swimming in the natural pool for hours on end. Ahhh the blessed memories.

U ladies reminded me of things I hadn't thought about in a long, long time: the smell of lilacs, I love that; the swing dad hung in a big, old maple tree; sitting around a campfire and singing songs like, Delta Dawn; and how dad ran behind that two-wheeler, the first time I rode; and the day I smashed dad's milk delivery truck into the biggest tree in the frontyard. I don't how my folks' survived three of us kids.

How about jumping from rock to rock in a local stream, searching for tadpoles, and climbing the banks of the stream without falling?

I can feel the cooler temperature of the wooded areas that surrounded the streams. Fun memories.

I miss the summer pears... nothing like walking out to a tree and plucking a crispy ripe summer pear, eating it on the spot, juices running down the chin.

Yum! I remember getting peaches off the trees here. Oh and growing our own tomatoes...picking them off the vine and eating them still warm from the sun while in the garden.

Queens, NY: On the hottest days of summer, the grown-ups would let the kids turn on a garden hose and run through it.

Some years Grandma would contribute money so we'd rent a bungalow in the Catskills for a month. Dad drove us all up (me, Mom, younger sister, Grandma.) He'd be there some of the time but had to work most weeks.

I liked frogs and chameleons. I'd catch them and put them in an empty milk carton with some water. Usually they'd die and I'd be depressed all day.

One year, a certain snooty aunt and her family came to visit the bungalow. She opened the milk carton and the frog jumped out. She screamed. The highlight of my day!! Mom scolded me, but after the snooty aunt left, Mom said she had a hard time not laughing.

So, what did you call your parents. We were under strict orders from my mother to call each a certain thing:
Mother and her parents:
Grandmother
Granddaddy
Daddy and his parents:
Peepaw
Granny Pearl (later to be shortened to Pearlie)

Our girls call my husb and me, Dad and Mom... and my grandchildren call me Gimme (as in give me, I often think), and him Poppy.

Pearlie let one of my sisters and me play out under a tree in the circle driveway in our panties and her bras, which had big cups and hung off our tiny shoulders... what a picture! She lived way out in the country where there was no chance of anyone seeing us.