Listening to Can’t Get It Out of My Head by Electric Light Orchestra.

I was having a conversation with someone yesterday and the topic turned to things we remembered from our childhood. In particular, we talked of summertime and the truck that swept the neighborhood trailing a thick fog of pesticide. I have vivid memories of visiting my aunt and the panic that set in as the distinctive hissing sound penetrated the atmosphere. She would grab my hand and tug me toward the door, “It’s the bug man. Hurry. We have to get inside.” My little heart pounded as we raced to beat the cloud of poison that I was sure would kill me dead on the spot if it reached me.

I was surprised by how this topic triggered a stream of other summer memories I hadn’t thought of in years. They included the ice cream man who always filled my waiting cup with a huge piece of dry ice. “Just don’t touch it,” he would say before driving away without a second thought or a care, all so that I could pretend to drink from it like Wednesday Addams. It’s amazing that I still have fingers, or lips. And there were days I spent roaming the neighborhood on my bike (no helmet, mind you) until dark after having just crossed a busy highway alone to get to Krispy Kreme with the last of my pocket change.

But it wasn’t just the moments that cause me to now marvel at my own survival, it was the homemade delights, pastries made with fresh Chilton County peaches and cobblers so good I would scour the hillside for hours just to find enough blackberries to coax my mother into making one. It was also the days where nothing at all happened other than sitting out on the back patio helping my grandmother snap a bag full of peas picked from the garden. These memories sent me back there with the sounds and the smells, and the sense of freedom that was born out of my complete ignorance of the world.

 I was queen of skinned knees, neighborhood wars fought with rocks and sometimes bottle rockets, and finding money others had lost on the street. It had been pure magic and I had been invincible.