All of us during our childhood could not wait for the last day of school, for our summer vacation to begin. Summers when I was young, meant I would spend days with my Grandma, my sister, and my cousins, playing all over cow pastures, Grandma’s yard, and my cousins’ house. Grandma and my cousins lived on 25 plus acres of cow pastures and a small lake in the middle. Their houses sat at the front of the property, a short distance apart. When I went to Grandma’s house early on a summer day, I would yell for Jason, wave to him to see if we could play. He’d ride his bike or go-cart and join me. The hours passed as we climbed trees or roamed through the pastures on make believe hunting adventures. We mashed poke salad berries to make ink, dipped a stick in it, and wrote on rocks or pieces of wood. We threw crab apples to see who could throw it the farthest or feed them to the cows. We even played on top of the LP gas tank, a great submarine, ship, or horse!

When my sister and I traversed to our cousins’ house, summertime meant hours of our favorite game: War. Jeff and Jason had a plethora of play guns: pistols, rifles, dart guns, cap guns. We split into teams, usually Jeff and Jennifer vs. Jason and me. It was a hide and seek, stealth mission game. One pair hid outside, while the other pair stayed inside the basement, no peeking! The goal was a surprise attack. If you were seeking, you wanted to find the others and shoot first. If you were hiding, you wanted to jump out and shoot before you were spotted and run back to home base.

One summer day, Jason and I climbed up our favorite magnolia tree to hide. Minutes passed. We sat on the branches, silent, waiting with our guns ready. Jeff comes walking up to the tree, looking around on the ground. I am ready to jump down, but Jason motions to me to wait. Jeff walked away. We stayed in the tree longer. Finally, Jeff came back around. That time, Jason and I leaped off our perch, landing on both sides of him. “Pow-Pow, we got you!” Victory for us! Jeff was totally shocked! We laughed as we recalled how Jeff had walked right under us, not suspecting anything.

Summer evenings, as the sun set, we ran around Grandma’s yard catching lightning bugs, placing them in a mason jar. By that time, our parents finished up working on the farm. Everyone gathered in Grandma’s driveway, sitting on tailgates of a truck or jeep or in chairs in the yard. I looked around feeling the warm coolness of a summer evening, feeling the joy of my family being together, a magical way to end a summer day at Grandma’s farm.