When I was a kid, summer ended on Labor Day. We started to school the next day and this also started football season, quickly followed by Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Now school starts sometime in mid-August or even before. Kids have a very scheduled and regimented summer, so it doesn’t seem like they had a summer at all, just one camp or activity after another. They have no real time to lollygag. There are no more Huck Finn days.
We always know when it is time for school to start. Shortly after July 4, the stores start posting their “Back to School” signs. They get the sales started as early as possible.
Those “Back to School” signs always gave me butterflies in my stomach. I had mixed emotions about the signs; a little depression, yet a feeling of excitement about a new beginning.
The year should really start after Labor Day rather than January 1. Starting after Labor Day would give the kids an adequate share of time to enjoy the freedom that summer offers. Their freedom ends all too soon. The kid’s calendar would have Christmas early in the year, followed soon by the Super Bowl then March Madness and before you know it, summer would be ready to start.
Anyway, that’s the kid’s year. I just wish they would give them a little more unstructured summer time. There are to many fish that need catching and who knows, we might even resurrect an interest in baseball.
As for me on the porch in Salado, all seasons have merged and I just pretend it’s summer all the time.