Sum- Sum- Summertime

About a hundred years ago – or so it seems – I worked. Oops, put the period in there too soon. I meant… I worked in manufacturing making knitting needles in Laconia, New Hampshire. It was a darn good job. 

You’re probably picturing large needles used for making baby blankets for that new niece, and reindeer sweaters for that cousin you never liked anyway who will now be forced to humiliate himself at your next Christmas party. 

Nope. These needles were much smaller, and they were used by the gazillions in large industrial knitting machines that spat out fully-realized USofA socks and underwear! Some wise adman decided to stitch the name Fruit of the Loom on many of these products instead of “fruit of the hulking, oily, metallic contraptions” which shows the artistic creativity that made this country great, even before AI. 

The reason I’m remembering this now, other than that annoying habit I have of forgetting what I did yesterday but remembering minutia from the previous century, is that my manufacturing plant, like so many manufacturing plants back east, shut down for two weeks this time of year – also known as the brief, albeit stifling, summer vacation season.

Laconia is part of the Lakes Region, so named because we had a lot of lakes. This was a desirable destination for many people living south of us – they who clad their steamy, winter-white bodies in colorful bathing suits (also made in this country), took a photo at lake’s edge with the old Kodak, and then sat in the shade drinking non-IPA American beers opened with a tool that could also open a can of beans and be used to fend off wild bears, though no one ever lived to tell that tale. 

However, because of us locals’ desire to make vacation as labor-intensive as possible, we left our New Hampshire abodes and headed for the wilderness of the Maine coastal campgrounds for those two weeks so we could be near the lobster-filled waters of the Atlantic Ocean and battle mosquitos the size of hummingbirds. This meant setting up 10×12-foot tents on 11×13-foot sites, ducking under temporarily strung lines holding salt-encrusted swim trunks, and saying brief hellos to our new neighbors, many of whom were the same neighbors we didn’t particularly get along with in Laconia.

Old Orchard Beach was the favorite destination. It offered miles of sand so hot you had to wear cheap, rubber flip flops (who would have thought those would still be in vogue?) which of course your children forgot to bring – so that along with metal coolers, heavy wooden beach umbrellas, wool blankets and 67 towels – you had to carry the kids approximately three miles to the only open piece of beach, currently consisting of a six-foot deep hole created by the last occupants, a group of miners from nearby Québec.

The sun, which refuses to make an appearance in New England from November to May, makes up for its absence by supplying the kind of heat that can melt the American (of course) cheese in the bologna sandwiches in the cooler. But once settled upon your little piece of gritty heaven, you can hot-foot it, literally, to the water and shock your body into hypothermic numbness.

Unlike Santa Barbara, where you take three steps and you are over your head, you must walk halfway to Europe to get knee-deep at Old Orchard Beach. Which means, unlike a swimming pool, you cannot quietly relieve yourself while pretending you are blissful for another reason. So, you have two choices: sit down in screaming icy agony or walk to the restrooms which are so far away they may be in another
zip code.

About the time your skin is as crispy as a product from KFC, you begin the trek back to the campground, where you try to make a campfire out of the wood you bought at the store which had been rained on for about a week, all while the kids stand there sticks in hand ready to make the smores you promised them. That’s when you remember you left the marshmallows and chocolate in the closed car all day. 

Excuse me. Those Augusts gone by kinda make me a bit misty-eyed.