The Summer Solstice
A few days ago we had a quaint reminder of days gone by when life was simple and summers were about listening to music in the park and catching fireflies. Quick, what was your first job as a kid? Some might say mowing a lawn, For me it was caddying at the Poland Spring Golf Course in lovely Poland Spring, Maine. We lived there from January, 1966 until August, 1968. Those years pretty much took me through what we now call middle school and starting me in high school at a nearby prep school reminiscent of the places in movies like Dead Poets’ Society, The Emperor’s Club and The Holdovers. The binding memories of those days are less about the muddy springs or even the gloriously colorful falls, but more about the days of winter filled with skiing and the long and wonderful days on the golf course in the summer. We actually lived on the 18th hole of the golf course, so its not surprising that it would dominate my memory banks. I spent the entire months of June, July and August for three summers trudging around that hilly golf course. I caddied for an entire summer, putting a permanent notch in my formative left shoulder. I learned how to lose an entire day’s wages playing Acey-Deucy in the locker room in five minutes and having to make it back by cleaning the locker-room, a very nasty business. I spent the next summer in solitude running a remote 9th hole concession stand and learning all the important lessons about commerce from managing costs and inventory down the slippery ethical slope of pilfering when no one is looking. And then I spent the last summer in the managerial lap of luxury, commanding the troops who tended to the pool, maneuvered the golf carts and shagged the balls. I was a combination recreation manager and assistant pro shop manager at the age of 14. I feel like Maine gave me lessons in being a lowly laborer, a struggling entrepreneur and a corporate manager with perks. Altogether a very instructive few summers and a decent start to the various pros and cons of a working life.
Meanwhile, my sister’s jobs, like most young women in those days tended to be focused on babysitting. If men learned about life working in the fields and factories, women learned about home life and economics working as babysitters and care-givers to youngsters. I guess people still babysit, but all Kim and I know about at this stage of life is dog sitting. When Natasha flies in from New York for a week or two to watch our dog (first Cecil, then Betty and now Buddy), it seems extravagant and silly, but the numbers actually work out somewhat better than the local alternative. Such is the power of having a vacation-like California home that probably needs a house sitter anyway when we are away. The local option is Colean, who has a nice doggy daycare operation that Cecil tolerated, Betty shunned and Buddy actually likes (when he is not getting bitten in the neck). Lately, Kim has tried to give Buddy a local stay-at-home option particularly when she has heavy-duty singing rehearsals and I am otherwise occupied. She has found a neighborhood young woman to come over and Buddy sit.
And as these things go, neighborhood gal was busy the next time Kim needed her, but, of course, she had a gal pal who went to the same high school who was prepared to be Buddy’s play date for the evening. When this shy, young, blonde, blue-eyed woman came over, I did what Dad’s always do and made trivial conversation as she played softly with Buddy in the get-to-know-you way. She seemed pleasant enough, but not so talkative (the “what are your college plans?” question always throws kids off their game in any era). When Kim and I came home it was quite the Americana scene. To begin with, I almost plowed my truck into the back of a small black, tricked-out Toyota that was parked in my spot and was not the babysitter’s silver Mom’s grocery shopping car she came in. I guess the babysitter had invited company over (again, not so unusual in the tradition of American history). On the kitchen counter was a pizza box and a few empty soda cans….again, pretty normal. In the distant end of the living room, with the 85” Samsung smart TV brightening an otherwise dark room, I could see the silhouetted heads of two people sitting close to one another on the sofa watching Netflix. Nothing offensive there, and perhaps, actually, kinda sweet so far. Of course, it was our babysitter and a young man who happened to be the brother of our original babysitter. He had grown up in the last five years since I gave him a summer job of washing my cars and watched him squirm when he had to renegotiate the price, which he had severely underbid. He had just graduated high school where his young partner in babysitting was about to be a rising senior at the same high school. Betty Sue might not have been marrying the star high school quarterback in this scenario, but it did look a lot like American youth in the 1960’s.
While Kim went around sorting out the kitchen and taking Buddy out for a quick pee walk (I’m sure they had done that at some point in the evening, but Kim is still working on Buddy’s house training), I sat in the living room and made conversation with the adorable couple, who sat decidedly further apart than they had been when we had come in. It seems that the young man’s parents (who we know quite well) are away on an anniversary trip to Greece and will not be back yet for a few days. In other words, the young graduate is home alone. He’s home alone at one of those moments in life that doesn’t get much better. It is the early part of summer. He has just graduated and doesn’t yet really have to think too much about what’s next educationally since he is already admitted to one local college or another. I don’t know what his summer plans entail, but I am guessing that whether its an early-rising job or just a lazy interlude before some upper-middle-class-affluent summer travel adventure (his older sister is racing mountain bikes in Italy as an internationally ranked competitor), he has plenty of energy to stay up late at night with this young female friend as long and wherever she is available.
Our conversation went through many casual topics that were informational, local news oriented (yes, they are invited to our neighborhood party on Saturday…as though they had nothing better to do) and career minded (thank you, Professor Rich). At one point Kim, who had sat down with us by then, mentioned that we were just heading into a nice warm summer season and that the summer solstice was just a few days away from us. This is when Mr. About-to-be-a-mechanical-engineering-college-student and Ms. I-want-to-be-either-a-real-estate-agent-or-a-nurse, turned and said to us, “what’s a summer solstice?” Luckily, neither had said they wanted to be an astronomer or climatologist, because then I would be worried for our species. But these two native Californian teenagers, who looked so sweet together and fit the picture of life in these United States to a tee, went about their evening probably marveling at another factoid in the universe that they had learned about earth science, wondering what more there was to know about the world. Or maybe not.