The other night I experienced something I had almost forgotten.
It was around 8 p.m. and I was taking my trash cans down to the street for Monday morning pickup. Something happened that it has been a lot of Augusts since the last time.
After a relatively normal late summer day, it was halfway cool outside.
Unless there is a storm coming, that rarely happens at this time of year an hour south of Atlanta. I don’t recall it happening all that often in late August during the 20 years I lived in Los Angeles.
I suppose that’s a result of climate change, even though one otherwise-intelligent friend of mine swears there is no such thing. I’m not smart enough to know for sure, but I could swear summer didn’t always last eight or nine months.
The last part of August was one of my favorite times of the year, especially during the decade or so I lived in southwestern Ohio. It was cool in the evenings and three months of summer vacation were winding down, leaving me eager to get back to school.
I remember something about those Ohio nights that I don’t remember from any of the other nine states where I lived. Fireflies, or lightning bugs as we called them. I think it might be half a century since I saw one.
It’s funny how memories slip away. Most of my memories of Ohio, where we lived until I was 13, are pretty vague. I can’t remember anything at all about my bedroom from ages 7-12, although I remember some details about my bedrooms before that and after that.
My most vivid summer memory was when I was 12. It was the first summer I listened to rock and roll music. The Dayton rock station did a countdown of the top 40 from 1-5 p.m. every weekday and I remember hearing the first hit records by the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons. I remember Gene Pitney, Bobby Vinton and Brenda Lee, and I also remember wonderful songs by Sam Cooke and Ray Charles.
It was more than a year before the British Invasion and about the same amount of time before Motown.
Actually, I was spoiled by local radio. When we moved to Virginia in 1963, the two best radio stations — WEAM in Arlington and WPGC in Maryland — couldn’t be tuned in at night from where we lived, at least not if all you had was an AM radio.
As difficult as it might be to comprehend, I think it was 1971 before I had an FM radio, and after that I think the only time I ever listened to AM was in the car.
But …
… you digress.
Yes, I digress.
Autumn weather used to be so wonderful. I remember how wonderful it was to play football or basketball after school when the temperature was in the low 50s or even high 40s. When there were cool breezes or even cold winds, that’s weather I only seem to feel in January anymore.
I don’t participate in sports anymore either. The last time I even played golf was nearly seven years ago.
Even the most old-mannish activity of all — going for a walk — has been beyond me because of chronic pain in my lower back.
I have written before about how I have lived in 10 different states, one of them twice many years apart. I have said I have done something few people do, living in four different states in four parts of the country for more than 10 years each.
The only one in which the climate was all that different from the others was Ohio, where I lived from late 1952 to early 1963. Most of that time was in the Dayton area, although I have very little in the way of emotional ties there. In fact, if your home town is where your heart is, my home town is a place I lived only when I was 3 years old.
Crestline, Ohio, is where my mother was born and raised. Its population peaked at nearly 6,000 in the 1970 census but is down to about 4,500 now. In the heyday of the railroads, it was the No. 1 railroad town between Pittsburgh and Chicago. Railroad Avenue, which no longer exists, had hotels, restaurants and shops. By the mid 1950s, they were all being abandoned.
Only from the perspective of 70 years later can I appreciate how wonderful it was. It was small enough that I could walk from one end to the other, and when I was around 10 or 11, I could walk around collecting pop bottles — yes, bottles — and find enough to buy candy bars and Superman comic books.
I could get my mitt and walk to the park where there were nearly always pickup baseball games. I never played in organized leagues anywhere I lived, but I knew I could play a little by my performances in these games.
My grandfather had been on the police force from Depression days into the early 1950s and he was chief of police from before Pearl Harbor for the rest of his time. I loved walking around town with him and hearing people greet him with, “Hey, Chief.”
Crestline was where some of those cool late summer evenings happened as well as some wonderful Thanksgivings and Christmases.
I remember one visit in late June 1970 when both of my grandparents were the age I am now. We were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. There were a few visits after that, but the last two times were in 1985 for my grandfather’s funeral and in 1990 for my grandmother’s.
I’ll never forget what my cousin Peter Kindinger said after the second funeral when we were in my grandparents’ house for the last time. He said it was sad to realize that a house in which we had so many happy times would be one we never visited again.
Of course he was right.
Those cool late summer nights have never been the same.