Summer Days
Summer brought family reunions and always a fun day. My parents had literally dozens of brothers and sisters so the affairs were quite a gathering and a bunch of fun. In fact to this day one side still holds a reunion each year. Besides the hotdogs, pop and games, the really best part of the reunion came afterwards, when my brothers and sisters would spend the following week with our cousins in Dayton. It was a fun-filled week away from milking cows, feeding pigs and gathering chicken eggs. We would swim in real pools, not the muddy creek running behind our place. And ride bikes on hard surfaces instead of our gravel lane. And they had air conditioning, not only in their house but in the car! I still remember my very first ride in an A/C equipped vehicle; all the way back in the third row of a station wagon. It felt so cool even back there. Who knows, but maybe that experience led me to take my very first job at Copeland’s (now Emerson’s) in Sidney to work on the A/C compressor machining line during the summer after graduation from high school before heading for college. For certain, those summer vacations with our cousins in Dayton likely lead me consider a life beyond the farm, but the memories of those farm days will never fade.
Taken at St. Patrick’s School in the summer of 1947
