I swung my leg over the back of the big blue beast and sat for a moment in the warmth of a Monday afternoon.  From somewhere, seemingly far away, a sound caught my ear and held me transfixed until all else faded away and there was only the sound and I. A slightly deformed aluminum can ran before the wind in an irregular clickety clack across the asphalt parking lot not yet in my vision, but steadily growing in my ear.  Now it ran and now it paused as ever it came from out of a corner and across my front.  It was the noise of now yet seemed to echo not only from a distant place but from time forgotten as well.  As I sat still and rested in a  hypnotic trance engulfed by the voice of a passing metal prophet it seemed I could feel the waves of the sights, sounds, and smells of a half century of summers roll over my being.  I felt the hot wind of a summer on my face and the trickle of sweat down my sides.  The smell of chicken frying wafting on a summer breeze; the sharp cold taste of watermelon on a summer afternoon; the clear piercing ring of the bell on the ice cream truck and little boys running barefoot down the street clutching their dimes and calling out, “Stop! Wait for me!”  Baseballs, skins lost and wrapped in black tape; games improvised with shirts for bases and the three bats owned by a block’s worth of adolescent males.  Dirt clod fights and afternoons at the swimming hole; exploring the sandy cliffs along the river and climbing the rocky steeps above a salty green cove.  Dark starry nights and the blaze of brilliant pyrotechnics against a black summer sky.  Hot night air on the rooftop; hurtling through the summer night barefoot with the drone of the pipes in my ears and the refreshing rush of the summer wind across my face.  The sing song calls of mothers on a summer evening; fireflies, June bugs and yellow lights in the night.  The lonesome wail of a faraway locomotive careening across the distant countryside and seeming to call out, “Come along! Follow me!”  Feline combatants snarling, screaming, fighting in the night.  Quiet nights camped out under the stars and stormy nights filled with the flash of lightning and the thunder’s roar.  The cold, clean taste of an icy drink gulped from frosted glass and rows of soda pop bottles clinched between metal strips in the vending cooler.  The rumble of baseball cards on bicycle spokes and go-karts powered by one time lawn mower engines. Girls and boys; friends and lovers, gone and living; time, passed and yet with me still. Azure skies pocked by puffs of cloud and fading to white at the horizon.  Horned toads, lizards, and circling black birds.  Life in all it was meant to be and yet flowing past like a clear cool mountain stream.

I shook my head slightly and watched as the tiny tumbling traveler paused for a moment before me and then resumed its journey away and passing to my left.  I pulled on my hat and prodded the Dragon to life.  This is it, where summer begins.  Oh, I know that the warmth has been with us, off and on, for several weeks now and that the calendar clearly does not hail summer until well into the next month, but this, this special Monday, is where tradition and the summer soul have long marked the beginning of summer.  This is where this one starts.

Welcome to summer, my brothers.  Drink this one deep and long.  For some of us this will be our last; for some each gulp will hearken back to a thousand summer days.  This one is ours for now, but in a hundred evenings it will join the memories of summers past.  Drink it long and well this time and keep it with you where you go.

Welcome, my brothers, to this our summer.