The Glory of Late July...
In Chicagoland, the last days of July don’t whisper, they yell. Usually in a deep Chicagonese accent.
A symphony of attic fans, alewives laying on the shore, RC in a two liter, francheezies, ice cream trucks and kick-the-can echoing down cracked alleyways. The lightning bugs blink like Morse code sent from childhood itself, while the ghosts of a Schwinn Stingray leaned against a chain-link fence separating the park from the Lake Michigan beach. God, I wish I took better care of that bike, sorry dad....
We didn’t have calendars. We had Mrs. Jablonski’s pitcher of orange Kool-Aid. We had the ballpark dust on our shins, a brand new Louisville Slugger from the hardware store and the slow, sweet crackle of WLS under the pillow as we fell asleep on our baseball gloves.
Our older cousins played Cheap Trick too loud on the back stoop and someone always got socked in the arm for saying something stupid.
We kissed girls from the neighboring parish and swore secrecy on the walk home past their rectory.
Friday nights, when the kitchen was too damn hot, Mom dialed the local pizza joint and told them to make it quick. Soon delivered in a grease-stained bag with the map of Italy and a two-liter of RC ready to be divvied up between thirteen kids.
The attic fan, God bless... it had the pull of a DC-3. It took the heat, our snores, and our dreams right through the roof, replacing them with a breeze strong enough to lift the cowboy-and-Indian curtains like ghosts dancing one last reel across the plastered ceiling.
Now the end of July means waking up before the sun, answering emails, matching bids with offers and staring down at the dinner hour waiting to start over for the next monotonous day.
If I close my eyes just long enough, I can still hear the crack of the bat, still taste those creamy scrambled eggs that my ma occasionally made and still feel the worn leather of that glove swinging on my handlebars.
Growing up is mandatory.
Forgetting the glory of late July?
That is not acceptable.
Adulthood, parenthood, career and responsibility should never keep us from making new memories. Though relying on childhood memories is a sweet blessing.
What I would do for a swig off my Oldman's Lowenbrau right about now.
Anyway.... Let’s finish July with gusto and a couple wins at the old ballpark.
