With summer upon us I wanted to reflect on the summers of my childhood. Sadly, most of the memories are gone like those ancient summer days, but a few things remain.
One thing that occurs to me is that Mom used to have us boys take on a massive summer long project, partially to do something constructive, mostly to keep us occupied on something other than Atari and TV. The two that stand out were a summer of scrapping the paint off the house, and another of weeding the world's largest garden of weeds.
The scrapping project somewhat made sense: the house was old and made of wood and the paint that was there needed to come off before a fresh coat could be applied. What didn't make sense was the way we went about it, which is that Mom bought a few hand-held scrapping tools by which we were to attack this project. No chemical thinner, no heater to warm the paint to make it easier to remove. Just metal on wood for an entire summer. It was straight out of the Karate Kid. Scrap off, scrap off. That wood held onto the paint like a tight-fisted miser, and removing it was nearly impossible. What was more possible was removing sheets and chunks of wood. And sadly - to the detriment of the entire house - that was what happened more than once. Scrap off, scrap off. So, the Kennedy boys spent the better part of that summer removing chunks of wood and paint from what was in reality the world's saddest house.
The second project that I remember Mom throwing us into was to weed the garden. First things first: I think the plot of land affectionately called a 'garden' was once a garden, I mean one year it was a garden. Every year after that it became less and less of a garden and more and more of a forest. A forest of weeds and trees. Weeds that grew as tall as a grown man, with trunks as thick as an arm. Prickly and wild, these weeds were not looking to give up their plot of land and they gave the Kennedys a real run for their money. For the summer that year we attacked those weeds with everything we had. I think we made some dents, but by the next summer those weeds had come back with a vengeance never to give up their place again. We learned two important lessons that summer. One, it's easier to tend the garden when the weeds are little and can be attacked with minimal effort. Two, none of us ever wanted to be a farmer.
