Kickass and Long-Ago Summers by Bill Stokes

Attribution: BiblioArchives / LibraryArchives from Canada, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Bill Stokes

Kickass, the doorstop dog, shares the speakers’ couch with the keeper on this post 4^th of July morning to allow him to revive other such mornings when the rural communities across the Midwest measured them by:

*Cavernous hay mows stuffed to the rafters with sweet smelling alfalfa and clover after long sweaty hours with cantankerous loose-hay handling rigs.

*The last seasonal cultivation as the fast-growing corn touched the horses’ bellies.

*Grainfields grabbing the hot sun to turn green to gold, and thoughts to threshing crews and big feasts with apple pie desserts.

*Shiney new cars on the post-war market as the lucky soldiers who returned spent their combat pay and looked for dates.

*On the porch swings through long dark evenings, quietly grieving gold-star mothers heard the echoes of their dead sons chasing fireflies and laughing.

*It was the best time to be a boy, and maybe a little girl. The keeper will ask Phyllis, even as she was too young to remember the dramatic post-war return of Hershey bars and new bicycles.