What I Did Over My Summer Vacation

 

All those films in the upper photo, are now on one thumb drive

I'm seventy three years old and I still get a bit melancholy at this time of year. Summer is over and next Tuesday I will have to go back to school. Not really, but those feelings still come back. I did not like school. One thing some teachers did to welcome you back was to immediately give you an assignment. Write an essay about what you did over your summer vacation. I suppose that was to drive home the fact that the good times were over and for the next nine months it would be dreary work, in school and for homework. Anyway, here is my essay about my summer.

There were three dogs besides Scout. Bucky, Cricket, and Eddie. Bucky was a three legged dog with cancer who passed away soon after I started fostering him. I still cry when I look at the photos of him. Cricket was a sweetheart. Fostering her was pure love. Maybe too much love. Scout seemed just a bit perturbed that Cricket spent so much time in my lap and sleeping in my bed. Cricket found a great home with somebody who will give her that undivided attention she craved. Then there is Eddie. I did not foster Eddie, Eddie is just a fun old friend who I get to babysit while his daddies are on vacation.

Way back in April I picked up two boxes of 8mm movies from my uncle. Around one hundred and fifty, three minute rolls of movie film from around 1960 until 1982. My job was to convert them to mp4 digital files. I just finished the last one on Sunday. It kept me busy, and was educational. That's because the movies were full of my cousins, who I never really knew very well. After all, I was at least thirteen years older than the oldest of my uncle's children. So while they were having vacations, first communions, little league games, and birthday parties, I was living in hippie communes, hanging out in gay bars, and moving around a lot. Now I feel like I know that part of the family like I never did before. They seemed to be really great kids.

I also finished another summer task only yesterday. I repainted the wheels for my 1929 Ford Model A. They look fantastic, considering I did it my way. No sandblasting of the old paint. No powder coated paint job for me. I didn't even take the tires off the wheels. Just two spray cans of 'Roasted Corn' yellow paint from Home Depot, and a fitted bed sheet to keep the overspray off the tires. Anyway, like I said, the wheels look fantastic... as long as you're ten feet away. At least ten feet away.

So that was my summer. Now, bring on autumn, dead leaves, Halloween, and dark evenings.

Trees

 

This is my eighth summer in this house. When I bought the place there were no trees in the yard. Not in the back, not in the front. No shrubs, no flowers, just grass and a chain link fence. The dogs loved the wide open spaces, but I was not brought up that way. My mom and dad filled our muddy yard in the summer of 1950 with trees and bushes. Five apple trees, two or three... maybe four elm trees. A dogwood tree, poplar trees, and rows of lilac bushes. The trees grew as I grew and before long we were living in a little forested yard. Oh, and the weeping willow tree. We had one of those too, which was fun to climb but full of bugs. So starting in 2016, the first summer here in this house, I started to plant trees and shrubs. Not as many as my mom and dad planted, but enough to already give us shade in the backyard. Out front, the maple tree is as tall as the building and the Japanese maple has filled out nicely. The thing is that trees attract birds. We get a lot of birds hanging around now. So many that Scout doesn't even chase them anymore. Squirrels yes, but not the birds. As much as I love the birds and the trees there is only one drawback. That's what the umbrella is for. It usually catches most of it.