(First published June 24, 2018 in  The Times and  The  News Star.)

I am writing this on the night before the first official day of summer and you are reading this most likely on the first official weekend of summer.

That’s a beautiful thing. Not necessarily that we both can read, although that’s quite the huge break, but that we can read…during the summertime.

Eddie Cochran co-wrote and recorded “Summertime Blues” a way long time ago and Alan Jackson covered it. Bur for reals? Summertime Blues? What blues?

Every now and then as a grownup in late June, with worries about the electricity bill and your child’s braces and that dictator boss of yours, something happens — the smell of salt water or the sight of a child eating an orange sherbet push-up or the imagined taste of watermelon — and you are magically transported back to the time when there was no school and no shoes and, outside of gnats and your bicycle chain coming off now and then, no problems.

All of a sudden, again, it was summertime.

Real, childhood, barefoot, sweat-soaked, play-all-day summertime.

I love summer.

The inflatable pool.

The lemonade stand.

Tiny people running around aimlessly smelling of dirt and sweat and peanut butter and jelly.

Baseball. Little Leaguers.

The Frito Pie.

A shade tree.

The fascination with the Snow Cone has escaped me but I respect that for many, Snow Cones are the “s” in summertime.

A met a little girl, maybe 7 or 8, with her mom recently and said to her, “Happy summertime.” She went from bashful to a big smile just like that.

Summertime will do that for you.

I am approaching fossildom (fossilhood?; fossilness?) and so can remember summers of 50 years ago. This one memory on a day of having absolutely nothing to do involves me on my back in the grass across the street from my house and in front of the church, in the shade of a pine, my head on the ribs of my collie, Sport, and us just looking at the sky. He was probably looking more at the grass or chewing on a stick, but still…

Summer is a beautiful thing. Almost makes me wish I still fished.

Where did you go on vacation with your parents? Might be one of those one-day deals to Six Flags or even to the beach where your family pretended, for a few days, to be rich. This involved sunburn and sand in places you didn’t know you had and arcade games and some sort of sandwich on a paper plate at lunchtime.

We were never a Mountain Cabin people but I know lots who are. And really, the destination wasn’t so important. Wherever your parents threw you into the back of the Impala and took you, the main thing was that you didn’t have to get back for school Monday. Because there was no school Monday.

Because it was the greatest of all the seasons, summertime.

For sure, the heat is not as much of a friend as it used to be. It’s an age thing. There is more of a “wilting” situation than there used to be. We of age wilt faster.

But still, I’d rather be hot outside than cold. Snow and a jacket? Neg. All the people who complain about the heat will be wishing for it when the rare ice storm hits in January and they are wondering why their electricity — and heat — won’t come on.

But that’s nothing to worry about now. Not today, because it’s summertime, and the livin’ is easy, fish are jumpin’, and the cotton is high…

-30-