Media & news

Two months ago, my friend and fellow PowerSouth employee, John Dean, provided an article for this space on peanut crops, long June days and the Dog Days of Summer. Reading John’s article brought back memories of my childhood and the endless pleasures of summertime.

No one raised peanuts in northeast Mississippi where I grew up. Soybeans and cotton, with a little corn mixed in, were the money crops of that era. I remember planting time and then the long hot days, waiting for rain that would provide water for the crops, but hopefully wouldn’t be so strong they washed the crops away. If things went well, “Cotton Pickin” would lead us into fall.

The summer days were long and the weeks seemed endless. Mom would run us out of the house to “go out and play” early in the morning, and we weren’t particularly welcome back into the house until dinner (dinner was the noon and heaviest meal of the day – supper was the evening meal). We would run the neighborhoods on foot and bicycles. We developed mini-towns with toy trucks and equipment on the hill at the edge of the Pittman’s garden, built tree forts in the woods across the road, held “World Championship Horse Shoe” tournaments in our backyard, and had bike races around the long loops of roads, all before dinner.

After dinner, we would gather in my front yard and play some form of baseball game with a limited number of players. At times, we had contests around bunting talent or hitting balls into targeted areas. We also played “cork ball,” a unique game that apparently originated in north Mississippi that is played with a thermos cork wrapped in athletic tape, which was pitched underhand at high velocity and hit with cut-off broomsticks we would take out of shipping stacks at the Gateway broomstick factory in West Corinth. It only took four people to play a good game of Cork Ball, and we would have tournaments that might go on for weeks.

We would all go home by dusk and have supper, which was usually leftovers from dinner, and we would be ready to go again. After supper, we would play “Kick the Can” in our yard or go to the street behind us to the Dalton’s backyard with a large number of kids and play “Capture the Flag” with as many as 10 kids on a team.      

Sunday afternoons would always mean a short trip to my grandparents’ house for watermelon iced down in a tin tub. I still remember the sweet taste with salt, and the juice running down my arms. My grandparents would wash us off with the hose pipe on their back patio.  

We would also go down to the farm and visit my great aunt and uncle (brother and sister … neither married, but they helped raise my Mom, whose Mother died when she was eight years old, and effectively served as our maternal grandparents). They didn’t have air conditioning. Summer visits would be on the side porch watching summer traffic on Highway 45, a major thoroughfare from the Midwest to Florida, which was most often packed on a Sunday afternoon. My Aunt Verder would also have vanilla wafers and a Coke to cool us down. My brother and I would have to share the Coke, but that might be the only one we would have for the week, and we always looked forward to even a little bit.

The constant of those summer memories was the heat. Contrary to what we read in climate literature reporting that we are now experiencing the hottest days in history, it was really hot back then. We didn’t have air conditioning until we moved to a newer house when I was six years old, and the air conditioning in that house didn’t always work well. The games in the yard were all played in oppressive heat. We would take afternoon “Kool-Aid” breaks at different houses in the neighborhood. We would take frequent breaks under shade trees to cool down and talk about who was winning.

I still have pleasant memories of summer evenings sitting in my grandparents’ screened-in breezeway enjoying a cool breeze, listening to the Cincinnati Reds play baseball. I was a Cardinals fan, but still enjoyed listening to the Reds play a faraway game and getting some relief to the heat.

In July and August the adults always talked about the “Dog Days of Summer.” We always thought they meant it was so hot the dogs would just lie in the shade and wouldn’t play. We understood it must be hot if even the dogs wouldn’t move. Only later did I learn the reason it was called the “Dog Days” is that in late July, Sirius, the Dog Star and the brightest star in the summer sky, rises with the sun. The oppressive heat of July and August were associated with the rise of the Dog Star. We weren’t anxious for the “Dog Days” to end because we knew we would have to go back to school the day after Labor Day.

It is refreshing to be reminded of the times when my parents were alive and together and my grandparents were alive. They aren’t exactly Dog Days to me. I hope you have a good month.