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Julie Smith, author of Cursebusters, is here today! In the spirit of summer Julie has stopped by to share with you a little bit about summer in the south. I love her piece!
It’s actually titled “Planet Summer” and it definitely evokes some summer feelings for me. Take a look, leave her a comment, and make sure to stop back tomorrow for a giveaway that is paired up with this post!
Planet Summer
If you’re from the South, summer is something out of Tennessee Williams—a play that also has “smoke” in the title. It’s so hot you feel like you’re about to go up in smoke. It’s so hot everybody yells at each other and says things they later regret, like in those plays. Though there is an up side—if you can stand to go outside, you’ll find Nature’s turned your town into an emerald isle of lushness.
Heat, heat, heat—that was all I knew about summer till I started school, when my firsr grade reader introduced me to another planet. On this planet, the predominant color was a cool blue, not green, There were trees, and maybe a few roses, but no Spanish moss and none of the out-of-control vines and plants and bushes I was used to.
The houses were either small, neat two-story boxes for regular people or odd sprawling mansions—and mansions with no columns!—for the rich people. And I mean these houses were odd; like something the Addams family might live in. Out of very window in every house, you could see water. And boats. Although I lived “on the coast,” we had to drive miles to get to the each—and then it was beach, with rough-and-tumble waves, not cool, still lagoons.
Where was this place? Surely not America. It was just too foreign. And I couldn’t even be sure I’d really seen it, because no one had ever heard of the Alice and Jerry books. Everyone else had learned to read with Dick and Jane. The whole experience—and you can imagine how vivid it was—was like some strange dream passage.
And then, when I got married, my husband took me to a place where his family went every summer, a cool blue place with houses out of Edward Gorey, an insanely beautiful, entirely foreign place with water and boats everywhere. A place where it wasn’t ninety-six in the shade every day.
New England. Connecticut to be exact. Who knew? I can’t even describe the experience of finally seeing this weird dream sequence place and actually living in it for a few days every summer, except to call it surreal. Like some kind of dream come true that I’d always had and never realized I had.
One other thing happened too—I found the Alice and Jerry books on eBay. I didn’t imagine those either.
Bye’ now—on my way to Connecticut.
Thanks so much Julie for sharing!
Remember, leaving a comment for Julie counts as an entry in tomorrow’s giveaway! So keep them coming and make sure to check out the other past events as well :).
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